Hello everyone,
and welcome to yet another episode of German Prefix Verbs explained, one of the longest running and most captivating series in all of TV series history. Better than The rings of pow… oh wait, anything is better than the Rings of Power.
Today’s verb is another one of those hidden gems. That means you won’t find it in textbooks and “normal” vocabulary decks, and it seems really random and boring at first glance, but then you find out about its everyday use and you’ll be like “OMG, this is amazing.”
Ladies and gentles, get ready for a look at the meaning of
aussetzen
Quick note before we start:
If you want just a quick overview of the meanings, you can find it in my second project – the Prefix Verb Dictionary.
There, you can find a lot of the most common prefix verbs like angehen, bekommen or aufmachen, and you don’t only get hand made translations that actually make sense and that come with audio examples – no, you also get a really cool an unique interface that let’s you explore prefixes and verbs like nowhere else. It’s a new project, but growing fast, so check it out :)
But now let’s jump right in.
When you look up aussetzen in one of those boring legacy dictionaries, it’s likely you’ll just stare at a column of translations that don’t seem to have anything in common with each other. With words like to expose, to suspend, to plant, to criticize, to maroon, to pretermit, to skip and many more.
But contrary to what these translations might suggest, aussetzen is actually really straight forward.
Because all of the various meanings come from one simple core.
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I’m a bit confused about your example where you say “Die Fische in Marias Gartenteich sind massivem Stress ausgesetzt, seit Thomas dort einen Hai ausgesetzt hat.” Specifically the second clause.
Why would you “Ausgesetzt” the shark? Your not placing it outside of its normal position or outside.
Great question. I can see how that is confusing to non-natives.
“aussetzen” here is about “letting free to roam”. You have “an ecosystem” and you put an animal in it to roam free.
You’re right that a pond is not really “free” or “big”, but the example is basically “absurd”.
Does that help?
I thought that “Aussetzen” was in regards to leaving something outside its relative place of safety? Therefore the meaning of “Maroon” “Abandon”. Does it have something to do with the “Plant” meaning” of the verb?
Sorry if I’m missing something I’m trying to understand how this verb is used the best I can
In the context of animals it is about “setting free (out)”.
You could “aussetzen” a bear into the wilderness for instance. Whether the focus is on “freeing” or “abandoning” depends on the animal. If you leave your dog on the highway, “aussetzen” is negative, if you let a bear out into freedom, it’s positive.
The garden pond example is not typical and if you find it confusing just forget about it and think of putting a formerly captured shark out into open sea.
Does that help?
A little better yes. It´s that just that with how the article was written it seemed like the focus on aussetzen was just placing it outside the safety of something. I understand much better now. Thank you
aussetzen – skip a turn (mostly in board and card games)
Perhaps most literally in English “to sit so. out”.
Wait, “aussetzen” is not what you do to another player, but what a player does when they skip.
“to sit so. out” sounds like it’s about “causing” someone to have to skip a turn to me.
I might be wrong, of course but you definitely can’t “aussetzen” someone in German :).
It seems that “leave / leave out” covers a lot of meanings of “aussetzen”
leave out:
1. to cause to remain in the open
2. to omit or exclude
Hmmmm… that’s a bit dangerous. “aussetzen” doesn’t really ever translate to “to exclude” or “omit”.
“To cause to remain in the open” does fit well, but the second one can mislead you :)
(Es geht nur darum, dass ich immer darauf stehe, Deutsch an der Unlogik seiner Grammatik auszusetzen.) :-)
I’m afraid I have to correct the use of “aussetzen”. The phrasing is
– A an B aussetzen
A is what you criticize, B is the target of the criticism.
Der Satz wäre richtig:
– Ich stehe darauf, an Deutsch die Unlogik seiner Grammatik auszusetzen.
So richtig idiomatisch ist das aber auch nicht. Da würde man eher “kritisieren” sagen.
“Aussetzen” verwendet man tendenziell mehr in unspezifischen Wendungen/in Kombination mit “etwas”
– Ich setze etwas an [B] aus.
Ich würde gerne an PaulJs Frage noch eine anschließen. Was die Grammatik angeht, hätte ich nicht erwartet, dass es “etw irgendWO aussetzen” anstatt “etwas irgendwoHIN aussetzen” wäre, denn mit “setzen” (ohne Präfix) werden immer Direktiv-Ergänzungen benutzt. (i.e. warum wäre es: “Nach dem Streit über den Hai, setzte Thomas die meckernde Marie auf einer Insel [dat] aus”, aber: “Danach setzte Maria ihre Unterschrift auf die Scheidungspapiere [akk]”?) Steckt sich eine Logik dahinter oder muss man das halt merken?
We have a few of this literal translations into English.
For example instead of saying “We’ll maroon you on a lonely island” it would actually be quite common to say “You’ll set out to a lonely island.” The phrase “you’ll set out on [adventure/vacation]” is an extremely common phrase in vacation advertising in the U.S.
I also agree with berlingrabers that we use “sit out” to mean skip a lot in English as well. Especially when the person could LITERALLY be sitting it out for example in sports someone might say “he is sitting this one out today” or if you don’t want to partake in an event “I’ll sit that out”.
The meaning of “expose” is a little further removed, but we do use the verb to say we are putting something outside. Such as “I set the package out on the porch to be picked up”, so in that idea it does make sense that if you are setting something outside that it could get exposed to the elements. I’ve seen people say things like “I set something out and then it rained all night and ruined it” or “I set meat out for dinner and it went bad, because I forgot about it”, so there is that “abandoned” aspect in there as well.
As far as the complaining aspect the only thing I can think of close is to be “set against someone or something”. Further elevated by adding “dead” to it. “Why are you always dead set against everything I want to do?”. I guess I could see someone saying something like “you were set out against from the start”, but I think this “set out” idea for complaining would be a lot less common in English than in German and it almost always uses “against”, where it appears German uses “an” instead of “gegen”.
Well said!
Frage: The example had, “dass Menschen ihren Hund an der Autobahn aussetzen”. Okay, dative for the Autobahn, got it, but why “an der Autobahn”? I thought it was “an der Wand” und “auf dem Tisch”. “An” for vertical surfaces ” as in “das Bild an der Wand”, and “auf” for horizontal surfaces as in “der Teller auf dem Tisch.”
Good question. It’s called “an der Autobahn” because the dog is left on the side… the point of “an” is more about “adjacent and touching” and not so much about whether something is vertical or horizontal. For example, you also say “am Meer” when you’re at the sea.
If you leave your dog in the middle of the autobahn then it would be “auf” :)
Is auseinandersetzen related to the various meanings of aussetzen, as you’ve described it here?
Not really. “Auseinander” means “apart”. Auseinandersetzen” can mean “to sit someone apart”… a teacher could “auseinandersetzen” two kids in class to stop them from talking to each other.
And then “sich auseinandersetzen mit” means “to deal with/to confront” in the sense of you tackling some topic/issue, and it can also be used in context of arguing. But no direct ties to “aussetzen” except that there are the same parts in there.
Ich mag dein Physik-Witz
Wenigsten einer :)
Was it the sculpture or the sculptor who was outside in the weather – for years !
Loved this , learning lots.
Haha… my mistake. Sculptor would be “der Bildhauer” in German.
Just to check, since you only used stress and weather as examples of things one might be “ausgesetzt” to, does this work broadly for anything you’d normally want to be protected from/spared, literally or figuratively?
– Viele Wähler wollten vor November nicht zugeben, dass sie vorhatten, für Donald Trump zu stimmen, vermutlich weil sie sonst dem Spott ihrer Bekannten ausgesetzt gewesen wären.
Oh, and “quibble about something” could be a good fit for “etwas an etwas aussetzen,” at least in some situations. “Find fault with” is also a good fit generally, though it feels a bit more formal than your examples.
The example works perfectly. I did a quick google search and I found things like “Licht, Frust, Vorwurf, Druck, Genderwahn, Rauch”… it’s not universal but yeah, not limited to weather and stress.
At least in American usage, interestingly, “to sit something out” is a very good equivalent for the “skip” meaning of “aussetzen” (except when it’s about someone’s heartbeat). The literal meaning is a lot more like “sich raussetzen,” but it fits with your two examples really well:
– Ich setze eine Runde aus.
– I’ll sit out a round.
– “Wir gehen was trinken. Kommst du mit?”
– “Ich glaub, ich setz heute mal aus.”
– “We’re going to go have a few brewskies. You up for it?
– “I think I’m gonna sit this one out.”
The English “expose” has also historically had that “abandon” meaning like “aussetzen,” too, at least in some contexts. The ancient Romans were known to expose unwanted babies, i.e. abandon them to die out in the wilderness somewhere. It wouldn’t be a normal term for ditching your dog on the highway or anything, but the connection is there.
It’s also common to talk about “suffering from exposure” (i.e., to the elements – sun, wind, rain, cold, heat, whatever), which doesn’t seem to have a standard equivalent in German.
“sit this one out”… this reminds me of “aussitzen” (I’m sure you’ve heard it). It’s used mainly in political contexts when there’s a problem or crisis and the person in charge just does nothing and weathers it out. Merkel has a tendency to do that.
– Die Kanzlerin sitzt das Problem aus.
I probably have, but it’s good to see the comparison. That’s obviously kind of close, but a more typical way (at least in American idiom) to describe that situation is “ride it out” (pretty similar to “weathering” something). I feel like there’s another expression I can’t quite think of, too.
“Sitting something out” is really about skipping something you would normally want or be expected to participate in (or have been participating in up until now).
Iwo nichts dran auszusetzen. (check the first blue word after the physics joke for a spelling error, and before the second examples two times “ausmachen” instead of “aussetzen”) It was a very nice article again.
Would have been a shame to infect it with Leprosy, whose name in German was for a long time “Aussatz” (because the people infected were isolated in places away from the healthy or “ausgesetzt”), and the people infected were called “Aussätzige” (adjective: “aussätzig”). Nowadays one calles the illness “Lepra” or by a medical name, but the word lives in some proverbs, e.g.: “Hier werde ich ja wie ein Aussätziger behandelt!” = “I am treated like a Typhoid Mary here!” (or what do you say? An immigrant by Donald Trump…?)
I don’t know whether that belongs here, but there is also “voraussetzen” = “to assume/expect” with a bunch of connected words, such as “die Voraussetzung” = “requirement” and the parents-love-it participle “vorausgesetzt” . For example: “Du darfst zur Party gehen…” – “Juhu!” – “… vorausgesetzt…” – “Ohhh.” – “…du hast bis heute Abend das Zimmer aufgeräumt.” = “You may go to the party today…” – “Yay!” – “…iffff…” – “Ohhh.” – “…you tidy up your room till today evening.”
Actually, “treated like a leper” would be a very usable if not fixed expression in English too. I was going to ask about “Aussatz”/”aussätzig” myself. :) Not exactly everyday, except for people like me who work with the Bible often, where it’s still the standard translation for “leprosy.” (The word translated with “Aussatz” actually refers to a range of skin diseases, not necessarily Hansen’s disease, which is what the term is generally understood to mean today, at least in English.)
Wow, thanks a LOT for those corrections!! I really don’t know how ausmachen slipped in there. I must have been very tired when I wrote that paragraph :). Thanks als for “aussätzig”. I didn’t know it was connected to “Lepra” in any way. I always understood it just generally as “the ones kicked out by the group”, so basically like the dog left on the highway.