An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/Ebbe

by Friedrich Kluge

Ebbe, feminine, ‘ebb,’ merely Modern High German, borrowed, like many terms relating to the sea, from Low German; compare Dutch ebb, ebbe, feminine, Danish ebbe, Swedish ebb, masculine. The word is first found in Anglo-Saxon, where ebba, masculine, is the form (compare English ebb, whence also French ébe), nautical terms being generally recorded at an earlier period in that language than elsewhere; compare Boot, Leck, Schote (2.), Steven, and Bord. Had the Old Teutonic word been preserved in German we should have expected Old High German eppo, Modern High German Eppe. It is possible that the word is connected with the cognates of eben (Ebbe, literally ‘leveller,’? ‘plain’?). Yet Ebbe, from its meaning, is more appropriately connected with Gothic ibuks, ‘backwards, back’ (Old High German ippihhôn, ‘to roll back’); hence Ebbe is literally ‘retreat’; the connection with eben (Gothic ibns) is not thereby excluded. Scandinavian has a peculiar word for Ebbe — fjara, ‘ebb,’ fyrva, ‘to ebb.’ No Gothic word is recorded.