The virtue, he tells them, is not in the staleness of the bread, but in the care and thoroughness with which they are compelled to masticate it, on account of its hardness.įrom the San Antonio Light (April 7, 1883):ĭr. The majority of old people, dyspeptics and hypochondriacs, he observes, say that they can only eat stale bread they find new bread too indigestible. The famous Leipsic physician, Professor Reclam, in a late number of the Gesundheit, has ventured to say a good word on behalf of newly baked bread. Three of the earliest matches for Gesundheit in English-language newspapers involve the celebrated doctor Anton Reclam of Leipzig and his reports published in a periodical called Gesundheit. newspapers, 1882–1918Ī perusal of matches for the word Gesundheit in the Library of Congress's Chronicling America database of historical newspapers suggests that the word (meaning "Your health") may have been understood in the United States as a toast or greeting before it became associated specifically with a response to a sneeze. Think that the origins of the use of ‘bless you’ to soothe someone who Interesting that the word is used so commonly now that there have beenĪ few intervening generations since the wave of immigrants thatīrought ‘gesundheit’ to North America. They’re saying when they utter this odd sounding German word. May not even know the translation etymology or literal meaning of what Immigrant beginnings and is now used so often that the average speaker Prominently now in North American English gesundheit came from humble North America in the early twentieth century. Speaking immigrants entering the United States and other parts of Sneeze use of ‘gesundheit’ can be attributed to German and Yiddish Post-sneeze also requires us to go back in time though not nearly asįar as the days of Pope Gregory and the bubonic plague. Why Do We Say Gesundheit After Someone Has Sneezed?Īnswering the question of why North Americans use ‘gesundheit’ Large numbers of Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews immigrated to the Widely attested in American English as of 1910, about the time when The expression arrived inĪmerica with early German immigrants, such as the Pennsylvania Dutch,Īnd doubtless passed into local English usage in areas with This is sometimes used in the United States. In German, Gesundheit ( "Health") is said after a sneeze.
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