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.
- shows how many children or parents the word has
- get the translations and a link
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Sources for Etymology:
- Check "kunstlich" on DWDS.de
Biggest German Dictionary, great for etymology, usage frequency and collocations) - "kunstlich" 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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So I’ve been thinking about the word contrived and how to translate this into german, particularly with reference to artforms and its rather negative tone.
I have a feeling if you described a novel or a artwork as künstlich people might think you refering to its aesthetics rather than the thinking behind its production (?)
I’ve looked a bit at Linguee and DeepL and Duden.
I’m looking for something that expresses the “tried too hard” negativity of “contrived”
It seems to me that konstruiert might be the best, but there is also gekünstelt and gestellt.
I’m guessing these more or less give the same vibe?
Die Handlung des Romans ist sehr künstlich/konstruiert/genkünstelt/ gestellt
Do you have any thoughts on this topic?
For this context definitely “konstruiert”, or even worse “an den Haaren herbeigezogen”.
Ah cool, thanks. And yet another prefix version of ziehen to add to my list… got to be one of the verbs with the most prefixes…. : )
Definitely! For the cardgame, I have 19 prefixes included (+r-versions) and with only those, you can build verbs with “ziehen” have 73 different ideas. (ausziehen – to move, ausziehen to undress would be two ideas).
The only other verbs with that number is “gehen”. Haben comes in as 22.
good old haben deservedly gets the number one position…
Wait, no… haben has WAY less prefix verb ideas than ziehen. It has 22 while ziehen has 73 (based on 19 prefixes)
For anyone reading this also interested in translating contrived I also just came across the word “gemacht” which seemed to fit this context…
Hmmm, I’d advise against it. Chances are high that it’s not idiomatic in the context you want to use it in and then it’s really confusing.