{"id":30839,"date":"2014-03-12T00:12:14","date_gmt":"2014-03-12T07:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=30839"},"modified":"2014-03-12T02:54:54","modified_gmt":"2014-03-12T09:54:54","slug":"say-gesundheit-someone-sneezes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2014\/03\/say-gesundheit-someone-sneezes\/","title":{"rendered":"Why We Say Gesundheit When Someone Sneezes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"sneeze2\"<\/a>Today I found out<\/a> about the meaning of the word \u201cgesundheit\u201d and other sneeze etiquette around the world.<\/p>\n

You are probably accustomed to hearing or saying \u201cbless you\u201d after someone sneezes. It\u2019s simple sneeze etiquette, at least in English speaking countries. In Germany, it\u2019s polite to say \u201cgesundheit\u201d after someone sneezes, which more or less means \u201chealth.\u201d More specifically, it\u2019s made up of the word gesund,<\/i> which means healthy, and the suffix \u00ad\u2013heit<\/i>, which means \u2013hood. Literally, \u201chealthy-hood.\u201d<\/p>\n

Foreign words run rampant in the English language, so it should come as no surprise that gesundheit has worked its way in alongside its German relatives Kindergarten, doppelganger, poltergeist, and noodle. It\u2019s believed that gesundheit entered the English language some time in the early 20th<\/sup> century as Germans began to migrate to English-speaking countries such as the United States.<\/p>\n

The word steadily gained in popularity from there, and in some parts of the English-speaking world these days, it\u2019s almost as popular as \u201cbless you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The attraction of gesundheit isn\u2019t hard to miss. The English \u201cbless you\u201d has inherent religious connotations. Some today simply aren’t religious and so look for an alternative, while others have become more concerned about the political correctness of the words and phrases they use, and religion has always been a hot-button issue. Just as people are moving away from saying \u201cMerry Christmas\u201d in favour of \u201cHappy Holidays,” being able to wish someone \u201chealth\u201d rather than \u201cblessings\u201d is seen as more politically correct.<\/p>\n

Wishing someone well after they sneeze is an old practice, and it is something that can be found in (almost) every corner of the world. While the actual origin of sneeze etiquette is a mystery, the most popular and most plausible theory is that people believed a sneeze was a prelude to illness, and that wishing them health or luck with what was to come was only polite.<\/p>\n

Another popular theory is that a sneeze is \u201cletting the demons in\u201d which is the origin of the \u201cbless you\u201d response; it was supposed to guard the sneezer and responder from the Devil. However, neither of these theories is backed by much in the way of actual evidence, and we may never know why people started responding to sneezes in the ways that they do.<\/p>\n

Whatever the case, the sneeze appears to have caused worry in many different cultures. Along with gesundheit and \u201cbless you,\u201d here are just a few examples of how people acknowledge another person\u2019s sneeze around the world:<\/p>\n