Hello everyone,
and welcome to our German Word of the Day. This time we’ll have a look at the meaning of
wehren
And let’s just start with a real life example:
Imagine, you’re having this home party, it’s great fun, and suddenly your cat walks in with that certain look on its face. And starts talking shit about you in front of all your friends.
And then it grabs a beer and pours it over your head. And then it drags you to the bathroom to wash off the beer in the toilet. Cat is in bully mode and you REALLY need to wehren yourself or this will never stop.
What’s that you’re asking? If I am high? Oh that’s just great, so my cat treats me like shit and now you’re implying it is my fault?!
No I am not high!
I might have had a few couples of beer, though, yes. Just like a normal teacher. Oh man… this intro really got derailed, again, did it. Sometimes, the urge for nonsense just sweeps over me and I can’t resist.
Anyway, let’s just get started….
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In the example with the gazelle, why is it gegen den Löwen and not gegen den Löwe,
That’s called n-declension. A fairly big group of nouns gets an -(e)n ending for Dative and Accusative. But for a substantial group of these nouns it starts getting washed out.
It’s kind of a waste of time for learners in my opinion, which is why I haven’t covered it yet.
Thank you
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It is interesting – I wondered if, since it’s related to “weir,” it’s also related to “weird.” And lo and behold, it is! :)
“Ward” is related to “guard,” which according to the Online Etymology dictionary comes from the ancient IE root *wer- “perceive, watch out for.” It’s related to “warten.” It really is interesting how close “ward off” is in meaning to “sich wehren,” though.
Wow, yeah it is really appealing to see a connection there :).
And to its English cognate variants that mean to attend, watch defensively: “await,” “wait”; “wary,” “beware,” “aware.” And “warden,” supervisor of one or more captives. And in sports to parry, “ward off” an incoming missile.
Earlier you had said that the IE root of “wehr” is “wer,”* to wind, hence “worm.” I recall a German professor once telling our class that the root of the German verb infinitive “werden” meaning “to become,” to pass (wind, turn) into the future is thus the root of the Old German noun “Wyrd” meaning fate: as in the AD 500s Old English poem Beowulf line, “Wyrd oft hilft man der [doughty, fearless] be.” And that word “Wyrd” from the Germanic myth depiction of the three fates as the “Weird Sisters”–old, grey, strange, crooked, twisted, and terrifyingly inscrutable (like Greco-Roman Gorgon Medusa)–led to the English adjective “weird” meaning strange, convoluted and not readily or at length seeable or understandable.
* Misleadingly? “Wer” as in English “werwolf” (man wolf) and Old Anglo Saxon “wergeld” (man price, compensatory damages for having killed a man) means “man”; cognate with the Modern English Latinisms “virile” meaning “mannish,” and a “virago,” a mannish woman.
Wow, that last bit you mentioned makes me wonder if “virus” is also connected somehow.
First, I amend my above comment’s “‘virile’ meaning ‘mannish'” to ” … meaning ‘manly,'” a term of praise for a man who acts naturally and heroically as a man; whereas “mannish” is a pejorative for a woman who acts unnaturally aggressively, acts like a man.
And perhaps the English “virile” from Latin “vir” meaning “man,” and English “virus” and its adjective “virulent” do come from that IE root “wer” meaning to turn, wend (as in English “whirl,” and “waltz” from German “Walzer”), and e.g., bore through, as in “worm”), “virus” to mean a one-celled self-reproducing entity that multiplies to bore through near and then far cells, perhaps aggressively like a man.
Or not: per https://www.etymonline.com/word/virus, the ProtoIE root of “virus” is “weis,” meaning to melt away or flow, as a noxious fluid. But perhaps “virus,” first appearing in medicine AD 1728 to mean an infectious agent, and IE “weis” were allied in meaning from IE “wer” meaning to turn, wend, bore, perhaps having been applied to a fluid.
Etymology, which rediscovers and reveals the recondite, oft well time-buried roots of words, as back to their IndoEuropean “origins,” is a fascinating subject. As a college freshman I was first stunned when my German professor demonstrated that the “hund-” in German “hundert” and English “hundred” had the same IE root as the “cent-” in Latin “centum,” Latin for “hundred.”
Hello. That means “die Bürgerwehr” has “wehr” twice?
“Wehren” seems like an interesting word. Is it also connected to “ward”? The words are at least very close in meaning.
For prefix versions, there are also:
“erwehren”, which goes without a preposition unlike “wehren” that takes “gegen”. So you can say: “Ich wehre mich gegen den Hund.” and “Ich erwehre mich des Hundes.” with the same meaning. And yes, that is genitive, “erwehren” takes genitive. And that kind of already gives away that the word is very formal. I know it mostly from the sentence beginning: “Ich kann mich des Eindrucks nicht erwehren, dass…” = “It seems like …” (lit.: I cannot ward off the impression that …)
“bewehren”, (not to be confused with “bewähren” = “to prove one’s worth”) that means to equip somebody with weapons or defence mechanisms. Although that meaning is old and not really often used. You more often hear the participle “bewehrt” = “reinforced”, but not so much in the literal sense either. More often it is used in juristical talk when you want to know what is illegal and what not. “etwas ist mit einer Strafe bewehrt” = “a punishment is declared for something” (lit.: something is reinforced/warded with a punishment).
Hah… yes, technically “Bürgerwehr” is a double “wehr” :).
As always, thanks for the additions/completions!!!
(I’ve actually never heard “mit einer Strafe bewehrt” before. Are you in law? Wait, no… you were doing math, right?)
Maybe I’m watching too many real live police shows. There they always say stuff like: “Einbruch und Diebstahl sind mit einer Freiheitsstrafe von mindestens zwei Jahren bewehrt. In minder schwerem Fall kann diese zur Bewährung ausgesetzt werden.” in the voice overs. :)
Oh you mean like “Cops auf Streife” and this stuff :)?
Now that helped a ton in distinguishing the difference between the verbs–thank you! I had always wondered. Also, good point on GoT.
Glad I could help :)
Gut gemacht, mit vielen verständlichen Beispielen !!!
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Viel Erfolg und weiter so, “Kollege!”
Danke dir :)!! Dir auch!
Apparently a medical reference there, as the Ovid quote is: “Resist beginnings: it is too late to employ medicine when the evil has grown strong by inveterate habit.” If “wehren” is not passive but action-based, is resist the best translation? How about: Fighting off bad habits?
Well, “wehren” is not limited to habits :). And “fighting off” implies being successful while “wehren” just means that you’re trying.
Or did you mean as a translation for the Ovid quote?
Perhaps “curtail,” to say “cut off” in one word.
I love your ‘history stuff’! Burg-Wehrer – priceless. Thank you.
Stopping by from the United States of America to spread love the Brooklyn way to my fellow German bloggers. Keep on blogging to your heart’s content. Gotta love the “blogging side hustle!” :-)
Tryin’ to make it a main hustle :). Thanks for stopping by :D
Ich habe diesen Wort viel gesehen, deshalb ich froh bin, dass du darüber sprechen. Viele Danke für dein Blog :) es hilft mir immer
Das freut mich :).
Hier ein paar Korrekturen:
– … dieses Wort (nicht “diesen”)
– … deshalb bin ich froh (nicht “ich bin”)
– …, dass du darüber sprichst (nicht “sprechen”)
– Vielen Dank (nicht “danke”)
I want to deeply thank Emanual and all those members who have sponsored scholarships. I am a Mexican undergrad student about to graduate with a lot of tuition fees to pay, as well as with plans for graduate studies that also requiere me to save a lot of money. So I am very short of money right now. I found this site to be one of my most invaluable tools for learning German, which I just started a few months ago. I told Emanual that I’m planning to get a B2 certification by next year, so now I am even more comitted to do so! Again, thank you very much to those kind members who allowed me to be able to access to this blog through a one-year scholarship. =) I wouldn’t be able to do it without your help. When I am able, I will repay your kindness.
And last but not least I am very happy to be part of this learning community! Thanks again Emanuel for such a wonderful site! =)
Thanks for your kind words and good luck with B2. You’ll make it :)!!
“Wehret den Anfängen” is apparently from Ovid, not the Bible. :) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_gefl%C3%BCgelter_Worte/W#Wehre_den_Anf.C3.A4ngen.21
Wikipedia in English gives the translation as “resist the beginnings,” but I don’t think it’s a very well-known saying, at least certainly in the English-speaking world. How is it used in German? It seems pretty close in sense to the expression “nip something in the bud.”
I agree with “nip it in the bud”. (i.e. dafür sorgen, dass etwas aufhört, bevor es beginnt / bevor es ein Problem wird.) I would not understand “resist the beginnings.” (Das würde ich verstehen als, “den Anfang von etw resistieren”.)
Update: I did a quick Google search and apparently the quote is used fairly often by newspapers in context of Nazi Germany. No surprise there :)
Hmm… I think if it is used, then in a joking manner, using the pathos it has. It’s nothing you hear in daily life but it’s a strong sounding quote and I think many Germans know it. No idea why :)
Alternatively, to “head [cut] something off at the pass” also means, to stop a thing before or as it starts.
“to head something off”… is that still used, or is that archaic? (I do know “cut”, but I’ve never heard “head”)
Kind of interesting that Wehr and Abwehr have different endings… seems like most of the time the last component of the word defines the gender but that’s obviously not the case here… wah!!
Yes, definitely interesting :) But there is “die Wehr” which is what is part of “Feuerwehr” and “Abwehr” (“resistance”) etc., and then there’s “das Wehr”, which is “weir” as Emanuel explained, so “-wehr” actually does determine the gender in “Abwehr”. And it apparently is quite usual for homonyms/polysemes (words with same spelling) in German to also have different endings, i.e. being declined differently (and therefore also often having a different gender). Other examples are “das Schild”, nominative plural: “die Schilder” (“sign”, as in “street sign”) vs. “der Schild”, nominative plural: “die Schilde” (“shield”– again for the Game of Thrones fans among you ;) ) or “der/die/das Band”, nominative plural “die Bände” (“volume”, e.g. of a book)/ “Bands” (“band”, as in music group, although I’m not completely sure this belongs here, because it’s an anglicism and in both singular and plural the “a” is pronounced “ä”) / “Bänder” (“thread”, “ribbon”, “tape”, depending on context) repectively. “Die Bank” would be an example for the same gender, but different endings (“die Bänke” = “benches” vs. “die Banken” = “banks”) and there’s maaaany more :) Maybe you can give links to blog posts, Emanuel, in case you already covered those previously (I’m quite new to yourdailygerman), but Google search results also cover this topic pretty extensively :)
Couldn’t have said it any better :) (actually I would likely have said it worse XD).
I don’t have anything specifically about this topic but there’s another example: Mut.
As a standalone it is “der Mut” but there are several compounds where it is “die ___mut”. It’s a weird example actually because there are also nouns that are masculine “der ___mut” and in both cases the “mut”-bit has pretty much the same meaning. So two genders for one idea.
Here’s the link to my article on “Mut”
https://yourdailygerman.com/2013/10/16/mut-meaning/
The ending hasn’t changed due to adding ab, it’s just that there are two different nouns that are both spelt Wehr. One is feminine, and is a (outdated when used on its own) word for defense – this is the one that die Abwehr is derived from. The second is the neutral one mentioned above meaning weir.
Perfekt erklärt. Danke :)