Zahn

🦷

Meaning

(masculine,strong) tooth
(masculine,strong) fang
(masculine,strong) tusk
(masculine,strong) cog, tine

Frequency

Gender

♂️ Masculine

Pronounced as (IPA)

/t͡saːn/

Etymology

From Middle High German zan, zant, from Old High German zan, zand, from Proto-West Germanic *tanþ, from Proto-Germanic *tanþs. The Old High German nominative zan alongside zand is not quite clear, but may go back to an inherited variation that was levelled in the other old languages. The stems zan- and zand- were then used indiscriminately in Middle High German. The success of the form without -d may have been reinforced by the widespread dialectal development: intervocalic -nd- → -nn-, which produced d-less inflected forms even in dialects that used zand-. Cognates include Dutch and Danish tand, English tooth. See the latter for more.