Prefix Verbs Explained – “zunehmen”

Hello everyone,

and welcome to our German Word of the Day.
Today, I would like to start with a poem, so here you go:

Wintertime.
White, glistering flakes slowly floating down,
covering all earth with a thin soft layer,
melting away when spring comes.
Wintertime.
Invisible, superfluous calories are slowly settling down,
covering all body with a soft layer,
staying around when spring comes.

Beautiful.
What did you have to read this, you ask?
Well, because it’s got a lot to do with our topic today, because today, we’ll look at

The Meaning of “zunehmen”

Let’s dig in.

Zunehmen consists of the basic verb nehmen and the small word zu.
Nehmen is a very very important verb as it means to take.

The word zu, when used as a separable verb prefix, expresses two core ideas:

1. to, towards (directional)
2. closed

There are a lot of verbs with zu and they can use one or both these ideas.
For some of them the meaning of zu is obvious as in zumachen which is to close (“make closed“). Older English had “Make the door to.”… that’s kind of the same thing.
For other verbs, the notion of zu is a lot more obscure. The idea of toward for instance can show up as a sort of sense of “affirmative”. Like in zulassen (to allow) or zusagen (to “say affirmative” or to promise).
Don’t worry if that doesn’t make sense to you. That means you’re normal. If you read more of my lessons on prefix verbs you’ll slowly build an intuition for this stuff.

Anyway, in the word zunehmen is based in the notion of toward and if we were to take it literally, it would mean “to take to oneself” or “to add to oneself”.
Which are really not that far from the idea of increasing or getting bigger.
Let’s look at some examples.

• Die Durchschnittstemperatur der Erde nimmt zu.
• The average temperature on earth is increasing.
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• Der Wind nimmt zu.
• The wind is increasing.
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• Der Schmerz nimmt zu.
• The pain is intensifying.
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• Der Jahresgewinn der Firma hat zugenommen.
• The companies annual profit went up.
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As you can see, the translation depends on the context, but the core idea is always some thing or item “taking toward itself” and getting bigger.
And note that zunehmen is done by the thing itself. Something can zunehmen (increase) but you cannot zunehmen something.

Cool.
Now, we already saw a few examples but we haven’t seen the most important use case of zunehmen yet. Because it’s also THE German word for gaining weight.
You basically say “I increase” in German.

• Ich nehme zu.
• I’m gaining weight.
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• Toll, Ich habe nicht zugenommen.
• Great, I did not gain weight.
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Now, of course you want to know the opposite of zunehmen.
Well, that is really easy in German, as to lose weight is simply abnehmen.

• Ich nehme 3 Kilo ab.
• I lose 3 kilo.
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• Ich will abnehmen.
• I want to lose weight.
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abnehmen would also be an interesting episode by the way. Because besides losing weight, it also means to answer the phone, to take off (hats and lids) and to believe.

But that’s for another day.

To wrap this up let’s look at the grammar of zunehmen real quick. Nehmen is one of the verbs which get a face-lift when they meet you or some third person. So it is:

• Ich nehme zu.
• Du nimmst zu.
• Er/sie/es nimmt zu.

The spoken past is built with haben and the ge-form is zugenommen. The real past stem of nehmen is nahm, so technically this would a correct sentence:

• Ich nahm 10 Kilo zu.
• I gained 10 kilo.
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But unless you want to sound really epic, stick with the spoken past.

• Ich habe 10 Kilo zugenommen.
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Now for those of you determined not to gain weight in winter, this is how you say it:

• Ich habe nicht vor zuzunehmen.
• I don’t intend to gain weight.
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You can see once again, that German has absolutely no shame when it come to doubling things. Zuzu-, gege-, die die, dass das, …der, der der… we got it all.
The corresponding noun for zunehmen is die Zunahme which is the increase. And then there is the word zunehmend, which can be translated to increasing(ly) or growing.

So this was our German Word of the Day zunehmen. It means to increase but if you do it yourself you are gaining weight. If you have questions or suggestions, I’d be glad if you leave me a comment.
I hope you liked it and see you next time.