LUFT
A running club in Berlin.
Luft is German for air, and it is not the same word as air. English and French took theirs from the Latin aer, and before that the Greek ἀήρ. Luft came down the Germanic side instead, with no Latin parent: Gothic luftus, Old English lyft, Dutch lucht, and the Danish, Swedish and Norwegian luft.
In medieval texts the word names the sphere between earth and heaven
. Its more
common older sense was smaller and more physical than that: a draught, air that is
actually moving. The atmospheric chemist Detlev Möller argues the stem probably comes
from Licht, light, which would make Luft the bright air, the
kind you get once the fog has lifted.
Moving air, bright air, and the space between the ground and the sky. We think that is a fair description of a good run.
Detlev Möller, On the origin and meaning of the German word Luft and some meteorological terms concerning atmospheric water, especially fog. DIE ERDE, Journal of the Geographical Society of Berlin, 145 (4), 2014, pp. 212–227. doi.org/10.12854/erde-145-19