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.
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Sources for Etymology:
- Check "mehr" on DWDS.de
Biggest German Dictionary, great for etymology, usage frequency and collocations) - "mehr" 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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could you explain what “nur mehr” means?
One meaning is “only more/just more”.
– Gibt es was, was du brauchst?
– Nur mehr Zeit.
If that’s not what you had in mind, I’d need a sentence, I think.
Die Leibwächter im nachfolgenden Wagen können nur mehr den Brand löschen, der als Folge der Explosion im Auto ausbricht.
So to me, this phrasing is just a “written” option for “only this was left” but I did a quick search and found this:
https://german.stackexchange.com/questions/11531/difference-between-nur-mehr-and-nur-noch
There, the accepted answer says it’s quite common in Austrian German for “nur noch”.
ok so its like the only thing that could now be done (in this case its too late to intervene other than to try to put out the fire)
That’s what I would have thought … a “all that they could do” kind of vibe.
However, I did more digging and found this:
“Unter diesen erschwerten Bedingungen konnten wir nur mehr den Brand löschen und das Nachbarobjekt schützen. Nach knapp einer Stunde konnte “Brand aus” gegeben werden und ein Großteil der Mannschaft rückte wieder in das Gerätehaus ein.”
https://www.feuerwehr-silbertal.at/cms/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=191&cntnt01returnid=164
This, to me, basically means “now” and I do think I have seen “nur mehr” used that way plenty of times in older writing.
Reading it as “only” in that example wouldn’t make sense because protecting the neighboring house AND putting out the fire is their entire job anyway, so it was 100% success.
I dunno, it says Bei unserem eintreffen stand das Ferienhaus bereits im Vollbrand.
So for me the implication is that at the point they arrive all they could do was put out the fire rather than say prevent significant damage e.g. if they had arrived earlier they could have maybe contained it before it spread to other rooms etc.
Do that make sense?
It does, but I don’t read it that way. To me, the vibe is more neutral. We’d have to look at more examples, I guess.
If i say “ich dachte, ich konnte es nicht mehr hassen” is their an ambiguity – like am i talking about time or the extent that i hate it.
Cus i wanted to talk about the extent i hate something but wasn’t sure if this was correct.
It is ambiguous for sure!
In spoken, you could use emphasis on “mehr”, but I think most people would throw in a “noch” for the context “extent”. Or a comparative element.
For the temporal meaning “nicht mehr HASsen” would be clear in spoken.