Prefix Advent Calendar – 9

beachten

There’s achten and beachten and both mean to eight. You know… like “I eight breakfast”.  Haha.
Okay sorry. Of course (be)achten has nothing to do with the number. It comes from the noun die Acht(ung) – the respect, the attention. Achten alone means to respect,  auf etwas achten  means to pay attention and beachten is kind of a blend of these, with a strong focus.  
The meaning could be described like this: “to notice and respect something in a certain situation”. Translations range from to consider to to take heed and in combination with nicht it’s often used in sense of to ignore.
die Beachtung – the attention, the consideration
beachtlich – considerable, noteworthy (in sense of impressive)

• Vorfahrt beachten! (Lit.: “Respect the priority in traffic”)
• Give way! (traffic sign)

• Was muss ich beachten, wenn…
• What do I have to consider/take into consideration when…

• “Wie findest du den neuen?”
  “Ich beachte ihn gar nicht.”
• “How do you like the new guy?”
  “I completely ignore him.”

By the way… the word Acht is actually three words with complete different origins. There’s the number which comes from the Indo European root for the number 8. Then, there’s the Acht in sense of respect, consideration. This one comes from an old Germanic stem *ah- that meant “to mean, to think” . The third Acht  means ban (for people) and  is rare nowadays. The only practical example is the verb ächten which is to ostracize, to ban, to outlaw. This Acht probably comes from an old Gaelic word but nothing in known for sure.