Dictionary verb *per fahren fortfahren

fortfahren

(verb)

Meanings

1.
to continue
(Something you are doing. Sounds formal. Often used in context of talking.)
How useful:
2.
to drive away
(Rare. "wegfahren" is more common. Spoken past is built with "sein" for this one.)
How useful:

Word Family

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:

  • pre- (mixed)
  • pro-  (mixed)
  • per- (mixed)
  • para- (beyond)
  • to fare, far (venturing)
  • for (from person A to person B)
  • forward, forth, further (going ahead)
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