klasse

Klasse is a noun in several Germanic languages, most commonly German and Dutch, with cognates in Norwegian and Danish. It denotes a group sharing features, a category or level, and in educational contexts it refers to a class of students as well as a grade or year. It can also describe a quality or standard, and in some contexts serves as the direct equivalent of the English “class.”

Etymology: Klasse derives from Latin classis through Old French classe, entering Germanic languages in the medieval period. The sense of division within a larger order gave rise to modern uses in education, taxonomy, and science.

In biology, German uses Klasse to translate the taxonomic rank Class (as in Mammalia). Colloquial German uses the interjection “Klasse!” to express enthusiasm, roughly meaning “great.”

In mathematics and computer science, the term is context-dependent: in German texts, “Äquivalenzklasse” is the standard term for an equivalence class, while the concept most often translated as “class” in programming is “Klasse” in German, the blueprint for objects and their methods.

Dutch and other Dutch-Germanic languages retain similar meanings: “klasse” for school class, quality, or category. The broader potential of the word follows the same cross-language lineage as English “class” and Swedish “klass.”