Verwest ein Verweser?

[glhansen]

Why is an administrator a Verweser? I totally misunderstood the person's role until I looked it up!

Comments

[schnee]

Haven't got the slightest clue - you'll have to consult an etymological dictionary or exposition -, but my guess would be that perhaps, “verwesen” as in “administrate” is an older meaning that was lost over time and only survives in “Verweser”, with “decay” having appeared later?

(If you find out, post about it here!)

[glhansen]

Well, now I'm thinking of things like one who causes spoilage and decay (I assume that would be a demon of some kind), a Verwesenswesen. And the administrator of the Department of Decay (one of the minor offices of hell) would be the Verwesensverweser. But Google doesn't agree that those are words.

[schnee]

Ah! What does Google know, those are perfectly cromulent words. :)

[glhansen]

I assume this is what they look like.

[schnee]

Cuter than I expected! And he seems to possess just the right amount of bureaucratic disapproval for a Verwesenswesen.

[dandelion]

I think that is the case:
https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/verwesen_verwalten_betreuen_vorstehen
Looks like a separate definition that just happens to be spelt the same: http://www.koeblergerhard.de/mhd/2A/chron_mhd.html

[glhansen]

Language is funny. But they still both make sense. I mean, Wesen covers a lot of ground from the specific to the abstract, including a community and the nature of a thing. And ver- can either have you acting on something, like verbrennen, or going wrong, like verkennen. But, not knowing that the other usage existed, when I came across the Landesverweser I was sure that church groups would be protesting him.

[schnee]

I mean, Wesen covers a lot of ground from the specific to the abstract, including a community and the nature of a thing.

FWIW, “Wesen” is a concept you'll also often find in law, and there's an article that was published in a legal journal, Das Wesen des Wesens (Scheuerle, in: Archiv für die civilistische Praxis, 163 5/6 (1964), pp. 429-471). JSTOR seems to have it, for free - may be worth a read if you're feeling philosophical, though it's not exactly a very accessible text for non-native speakers (or even native ones at that).