Knowing relations between words can help understand their meanings and build a more connected vocabulary network. Here, you can explore parents and offspring and discover the whole family.
- shows how many children or parents the word has
- get the translations and a link
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Sources for Etymology:
- Check "arm-2" on DWDS.de
Biggest German Dictionary, great for etymology, usage frequency and collocations) - "arm-2" on Wiktionary (English version)
(For etymological connections across European languages. Not always accurate) - Etymonline.com - Origins of English words
My favorite source for the origin of English words.
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“jmdm in den Arm fallen” means to restrain someone right or hold someone back? But is there a logic to it? The idea is the arm is blocking them? ” It sounds to me rather like the arm is breaking their fall rather than stopping them doing something to someone
Imagine someone walks toward someone else, ready to throw fists and then their buddy comes from the side and sort of pushes the guys arms down. You interrupt an attack by interfering with the arms.
That’s at least how I always imagine it, even though it’s of course used figuratively a lot.
Does that help?
Oh, and “jemandem in den Arm fallen” can also just mean fall into their arms, like at the train station after a long time apart or two teammates after winning the title.
cool thanks. Out of interest does “fallen” have less of a sense of “downwardsness” than “to fall” ? If I imagine someone holding someone back from a fight the direction the person who wants to fight is heading is usually horizontal not downwards.
Hmm, maybe a little bit yes.
You can aslso “jemandem ins Wort fallen” and then there are many prefix versions that are more about an uncontrolled, fast, high momentum motion than actual falling.
anfallen (attack), ueberfallen (rob), vorfallen (happen), bbefallen (to infest)….
interesting. thanks!