a. and sb. Also 7 Theut-. [ad. L. Teutonic-us, f. Teuton-ēs: see Note below.]
A. adj. 1. Of or pertaining to the Teutons; German, esp. High German.
c. 1645. Howell, Lett. (1650), II. The High Dutch or Teutonic tongue is one of the prime and most spacious maternall languages of Europe.
1657. North’s Plutarch, Add. Lives (1676), 39. He [Charlemagne] began a Vulgar Teutonick Grammar.
1719. W. Oldisworth, Quillet’s Callipædia, IV. 746. The fam’d Teutonick Valour, priz’d in war.
1724. Waterland, Athan. Creed, v. 67. There is in the emperor’s library at Vienna, a German, or Teutonick version of this creed.
1770. (title) A Compendious View of the Grounds of the Teutonic Philosophy. With considerations by way of enquiry into … the writings of J. Behmen.
b. Of or pertaining to the ancient Teutones.
1618. Bolton, Florus’ Hist. (1636), 117. The Cimbrian, Theutonicke, and Tigurin Warre.
1727–41. [see TEUTON 1].
2. Of or pertaining to the group of languages allied to German (including Gothic, Scandinavian, Low German, and English), forming one of the great branches of the Indo-European, Indo-Germanic, or Aryan family, and to the peoples or tribes speaking these languages: now often called Germanic, and sometimes Gothic. (See Note below.)
1727–41. Chambers, Cycl., s.v., Teutonic language, is the ancient language of Germany, which is ranked among the mother-tongues.
1768. Blackstone, Comm., III. xxiii. 350. Stiernhook ascribes the invention of the jury, which in the Teutonic language is denominated nembda, to Regner, king of Sweden and Denmark.
1840. Carlyle, Heroes, i. (1872), 22. The word Wuotan, which is the original form of Odin, a word spread … over all the Teutonic Nations everywhere.
1846. M’Culloch, Acc. Brit. Empire (1854), II. 79. The Normans, as well as the Saxons, were of Teutonic extraction.
1857. Maurice, Ep. St. John, xx. 336. He raised up the Gothic or Teutonic race; gave them in their barbarism and paganism a reverence for women and for human relationships which those whom they conquered had lost.
1864. Burton, Scot Abr., I. i. 5. The eastern and northern parts of what now is Scotland were peopled by a race of very pure Teutonic blood and tongue.
1888. Skeat, Etymol. Dict., p. xviii. German, properly called High-German, to distinguish it from the other Teutonic dialects, which belong to Low-German.
3. Teutonic Knights, Teutonic Order (of Knights): A military order of German Knights (in med.L. Teutonicus Ordo Militaris, F. l’Ordre Teutonique, Ger. Deutsche Ritter, in 16th c. Teutsche Herren), originally enrolled c. 1191 as the Teutonic Knights of St. Mary of Jerusalem, for service in the Holy Land.
Their first seat was at Acre; after the fall of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, they settled at Marienburg on the Vistula, and carried on a crusade against the neighboring heathen nations of Prussia, Livonia, etc. Their conquests made them a great sovereign power, but from the 15th c. they rapidly declined, and were abolished in 1809. The order maintains a titular existence in Austria and Holland.
[1586. Ferne, Blaz. Gentrie, 128. The habite and robes of a Teuch-knight was a cloake or mantell of white, with a blacke crosse vpon the same.]
1617. Moryson, Itin., I. 34. A house of old belonging to the Teutonike order of Knights. Ibid., 61. Prussen of old was subiect to the order of the Teutonicke Knights.
1645. Fuller, Gd. Th. in Bad T. (1841), 43. Martin de Golin, master of the Teutonic order, was taken prisoner by the Prussians, and delivered bound to be beheaded.
1727. Bailey, vol. II., Teutonick Order.… The Order is now little known, tho’ there is still a Great Master of it kept up.
1845. S. Austin, Ranke’s Hist. Ref., I. 163. On the eastern frontier, where [in 1503] the Teutonic knights were incessantly pressed upon by the Poles and Russians. Ibid., II. ii. I. 373. Maximilian wished to hold him in check, on the one side by the Grand Duke of Moscow, on the other by the Teutonic Order.
4. Teutonic cross, a cross potent, being the badge of the Teutonic Order.
1867. McClenachan, Scot. Freemasonry, 389. The flap [of the apron] is white, and on it is a Teutonic Cross (described as a cross potent sable, charged with another cross double potent or, surcharged with an escutcheon of the Empire, the principal cross surmounted by a chief azure, semée of France).
1882. Ogilvie (Annandale), Teutonic Cross.
B. sb. 1. † The language of any Teutonic race, spec. the German language (obs.); now by philologists applied only to the common or primitive speech, which afterwards broke up into the languages named in A. 2; also known as Germanic.
1631. Weever, Anc. Fun. Mon., 684. A Healt in the Teutonick, is a most couragious person, a champion, or an especiall challenger to a fight or combat. Ibid. Although the Teutonic be more mixed with other strange languages.
1668. Wilkins, Real Char., I. i. § 3. 3. The Teutonic or German is now distinguished into Upper and Lower.
1727–41. Chambers, Cycl., s.v. Mother tongue, or mother tongues, Scaliger reckons ten in Europe, viz. the Greek, Latin, Teutonic or German, Sclavonic … Irish and British.
1755. Gentl. Mag., XXV. 150/1. An history of our language, in which it is regularly traced from the old Gothic and Teutonic to modern English.
1864. Burton, Scot Abr., I. i. 14. All the way from the border to the Highland line, the people, high and low, came to speak in very pure Teutonic.
1870. Helfenstein, Teutonic Gram., 408. The perfect of the verb haldan must have been ha-hald in the primitive Teutonic.
† 2. = TEUTON 2. Obs.
1638. Sir T. Herbert, Trav. (ed. 2), 361. Verstegan (alias Rowley) [had not] dar’d to make us all Teutonicks.
1691. Wood, Ath. Oxon., II. 40. His Grandfather was by nativity a Teutonic.
† 3. pl. = Teutonic Knights: see A. 3. Obs.
1693. trans. Emilianne’s Hist. Monast. Orders, III. 280. The Knights of Rhodes … and the Teutonicks.
1796. Morse, Amer. Geog., II. 238. As grand Master of the Teutonics.
[Note. Late Roman writers reckoned the Teutones among the peoples of Germania, and Teutonicus became a common poetic equivalent for Germānicus. It is now however held by many that they were not a Germanic people. But, before 900, German writers in Latin began to follow Latin poetic precedent by using Theutonica lingua instead of the barbarian or non-classical Theotisca, to render the native tiutisch, tiutsch (OHG. diutisc, mod. deutsch = OS. thiudisc, OE. þéodisc, literally ‘national, popular, vulgar’) as a designation of their vulgar tongue in contrast to Latin, as if this German adj. were identical with the ancient ethnic name. In 1200 lingua Teutonica was similarly used, and thenceforth Teutonicus became a usual L. rendering of Deutsch or German. Some Early German comparative philologists (e.g., Bopp in 1820) used Teutonisch as the name for the family of languages including Gothic, German, Scandinavian, and English; but for this Germanisch is now more used in German, and Germanic by many in English. But in English there is an awkwardness and sometimes ambiguity in using Germanic beside German (in its ordinary political sense), which does not arise in German or French, where germanisch and germanique are entirely distinct from deutsch and allemand. To avoid this, many English scholars prefer ‘Teutonic’ as the term for the linguistic family, and it is commonly so used in this dictionary.]
