Disappointed in German – “die Enttäuschung”

 

Hello everyone,

and welcome to our German Word of the Day.
And this time, we’ll take a look at the meaning of

die Enttäuschung

 

Enttäuschung means disappointment and it comes from the verb enttäuschen, which of course means to disappoint.

Today, we’ll explore how to use them and how to say disappointed by and disappointed from.
And we’ll talk about WHY they mean what they mean because that’s actually kind of a really cool insight.
So if you’re ready, let’s jump in

enttäuschen is a combination of the verb täuschen and the prefix ent- and ent- is a prefix that expresses the idea of removing or undoing.

Sometimes, that’s really straight forward like in enthaaren which means to remove hair. Other times, it’s a bit more figurative, like entwickeln which taken literally means to unwrap, but which actually means to develop. Like … something was wrapped in a figurative envelop and we develop it and bring it out.

Anyway, let’s get to the base-verb and that is täuschen.

The origin of täuschen is a word tiuschen which meant “to fool someone into something”. And for a while, tiuschen was also a word for to trade. Which makes perfect sense, since there is quite a bit of cheating going on in trade.

However, using the same word for fooling someone and trading maybe isn’t such a good idea. Doesn’t build much trust, I guess. So the bastard tiuschen soon split into a light and a dark side. The light side is tauschen. Now, this split happened before money got to dominate all the trading which is why tauschen today basically means to exchange. I give you something, and you give me something in return.

• Wir tauschen Telefonnummern.
• We exchange phone numbers.
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• Früher gab es viel Tauschhandel.
• Back a few hundred years there used to be a lot of barter (exchange trade).
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The German word for the money based to trade is handeln. So, tauschen is the light twin. The dark twin is täuschen. It has been stripped of all notion of trading or exchange and only the fooling part remained. That’s why it today means to deceive.

• Ich täusche dich.
• I fool/deceive you.
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There is also a reflexive use of it, which is quite common.
You basically deceive yourself about a matter.

• Ich habe mich in dir getäuscht.
• I deceived myself about you. (lit.)
• I was wrong about you.
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So, this was the history. That wasn’t as boring as I thought actually. For once. Now, we have the parts ent with its meaning of ending things and täuschen as to deceive.

So enttäuschen should literally be:

• to undeceive

And that’s really not that far away from the actual meaning, which is

• to disappoint

Imagine going to that new restaurant in your neighborhood that has really great reviews on Google and then, it’s really bad and the reviews were actually fake. The deception is gone, and you’re disappointed.

• Das Essen hat mich enttäuscht.
• The food disappointed me.

• Ich bin enttäuscht.
• I am disappointed.
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Basically, when Germans say they’re disappointed, they’re saying “I’m disillusioned.”
Maybe that’s why Germans don’t get excited. Because if you’re not disappointed, you’re still under the deception. So disappointed is kind of baseline reality.

Wow, that sounds so miserable.

But for real – the word enttäuschen did evolve that way – from undeceive to disappoint – but as of today, most Germans aren’t aware of that connection at all. It feels like two completely separate verbs. Maybe like cover and to discover. The connection is super obvious and still not everyone is consciously aware of it.

Cool.

Now, the noun for disappointment is die Enttäuschung.

• Der Film war eine große Enttäuschung.
• The movie was a big disappointment.
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And the two important adjectives are enttäuschend (disappointing) and enttäuscht (disappointed).

• Der Film war enttäuschend.
• The movie was disappointing.
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• Ich bin sehr enttäuscht von diesem Film.
• I am very disappointed by this movie.
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The last example also shows the preposition that comes with it… it is von. You’re “disappointed von”. I think I’ve seen also über in that context but von is the proper one.

• Ich bin enttäuscht von dir.
• I’m disappointed by/in you.

 

And that’s it for today.
Let me know in the comments if you have any questions or thoughts or if you want to try out some examples.

I hope you enjoyed this one, have a great week but don’t forget… as long as you’re not enttäuscht, it’s not real ;).