anfahren

(an verb)

based on: fahren

hat angefahren

fuhr an

Meanings

to start driving

(The moment when the car starts moving. The spoken past is built with "sein" for this meaning.)

to bump into

(In the sense of a car accident. Usually involving a cyclist or a pedestrian.)

to bark at someone

(Colloquial term for suddenly snapping at someone.)

to have as a stop on the route

(A technical term mostly used in context of harbors. Not needed in daily life.)

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Word Family tap to show/hide

Root: *per

The core idea of this root was:

going beyond, going forth

And a lot of its children revolve in some way around the idea of travelling or exploring – like for instance the German fahren and führen or the English further.
It’s the origin of Latin prefixes like per-, pro-, pro- and also of the Germanic branch around for(e) and German vor, which are all about either “going forth” or a more abstract notion of going beyond a boundary.

The root is also the origin of German fahren and führen and the English fare, which all come from a sense of travelling, going into the unknown.

You can get a really good understanding of how the core idea can lead to various meanings by looking at German ver-.

The family is very big, but here’s an incomplete list of English members: