abfangen
Meanings
Examples
My Articles
The difference between "anfangen" and "beginnen". Preceeded by a lot of cool info about "fangen" and its prefix versions and what WIFI has to do with girth.
Vocab:
fangen, der Fänger, das Gefängnis, auffangen, einfangen, abfangen, empfangen, der Empfang, anfangen, der Anfang, beginnen

Word Family
The original idea of this root was:
fixating, fastening
It’s quite visible in offspring like the German fangen (to catch) or the Latin based “pact” which originally was a “fixed agreement”.
But there are quite a few surprises in this family.
Here’s an overview over most of the English family members:
- pact (fixed agreement)
- pax, peace, pacify, appease, … (fixed treaty)
- pay (originally “make peaceful”)
- peasant, pagan (fixed plot of land)
- page (piece of paper “fixed” to others)
- compact (“fixed together”)
- pole, palisade, impale (“fixed piece of wood”)
- travel (from a French word for “work”, which in turn is from a Latin word for torture that meant “three-pole”)