Dictionary verb ver verb *per fahren verfahren

verfahren

(ver verb)

Meanings

1.
to proceed, to go about something
(A somewhat technical word for doing some sort of process. The noun actually can mean "process". This use builds the spoken past with "sein"! )
How useful:
2.
to lose one's way, to get lost
("sich+Acc verfahren" - ONLY with actual vehicles. Not in a figurative sense of losing one's path or "getting lost" as in "disappearing".)
How useful:

Examples

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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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