Dictionary › verb › über verb › über (insep) › *legh- › legen › überlegen

überlegen

Word type: über (insep)
Based on: legen
Perfect (spoken past): hat überlegt
Preterite (written past): überlegte

Meanings

1.
to think
(Thinking about everyday questions, where you need a solution/answer. Does NOT take a direct object, but you can connect a question like "when" or "if". Similar to "nachdenken", but more mundane.)
2.
to decide, to think and decide, to come up with
("sich+Dat etwas überlegen" - here, the focus is essentially on the result of the thinging. Can be about a decision, but also about coming up with an idea. The self reference cannot be skipped if there's a result.)

Examples

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Vocab:

die Wahl, wählen, wählerisch, die Auswahl


Word Family

Root: *legh-

The core idea of this root was:

laying, lying down

of course the verbs to lay and to lie belong here, but the root is also the origin of law, lair, ledger, allay and low.  And of lager, which is essentially a German word that means storage.

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