Hope is fear’s opposite in a linguistic sense, too. The entry on ‘hoffen’ [to hope] in Friedrich Kluge’s etymological dictionary says: ‘by leaning forward, one tries to look further, with greater precision’.2 The hunting term ‘verhoffen’ still carries the old meaning of ‘hoffen’: ‘to stand still in order to listen, to hearken, to pick up the scent’. Thus, it is also said ‘Der Rehbock verhofft’ [The roebuck stops short]. Someone who hopes tries to pick up the scent, that is, tries to find the right way to go.
