Word.ws English Dictionary

Upper German

Upper German noun: one of two major dialect groups of the High German language; spoken primarily in southern Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Alsace, and South Tyrol; distinguished from Central German / Middle German (= Mitteldeutsch) by the shifts of Proto-Germanic *-pp-, *-mp- to -pf-, -mpf-.

Noun

Upper German (uncountable)

  1. One of two major dialect groups of the High German language; spoken primarily in southern Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Alsace, and South Tyrol; distinguished from Central German / Middle German (= Mitteldeutsch) by the shifts of Proto-Germanic *-pp-, *-mp- to -pf-, -mpf-.

Adjective

Upper German (not comparable)

  1. of the Upper German dialects

Origin of Upper German

Calque of German Oberdeutsch, oberdeutsch

Questions about Upper German

What does Upper German mean?
Upper German means one of two major dialect groups of the High German language; spoken primarily in southern Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Alsace, and South Tyrol; distinguished from Central German / Middle German (= Mitteldeutsch) by the shifts of Proto-Germanic *-pp-, *-mp- to -pf-, -mpf-.
What part of speech is Upper German?
Upper German can be a noun or an adjective.

Words near Upper German in the dictionary

  1. Upper Frenchville
  2. Upper Garlayan
  3. upper garment
  4. upper garments
  5. Upper General Luna
  6. Upper German
  7. Upper Growee
  8. Upper Gullies
  9. Upper Gundowring
  10. Upper Halliford
  11. upper hand

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Upper German (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “Upper German.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/upper_german. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.