reißen

1.

to rip, to tear, to rupture

(For fabric, material and threads that get torn apart)

Examples

• Diese Schnur kannst du nicht zum Angeln benutzen. Die reißt.
• You can't use that chord for fishing. It'll rip.

• Wenn du zu fest ziehst, reißt der Stoff.
• If you pull too hard, the fabric will tear.

• Ist die Naht gerissen?
• Has the seam ripped?

2.

to yank, to wrench

(The core theme is a sudden forceful pull. )

Examples

• Ich habe den Stecker aus der Steckdose gerissen.
• I wrenched the plug out of the socket.

• Ich habe gesagt "langsam ziehen", nicht "reißen"!!
• I said "slowly pull", not "yank"!!

3.

to kill

(ONLY for animals like wolves or lions that kill their prey. )

Examples

• Der Wolf reißt ein Reh.
• The wolf kills a deer.

• Der Löwe hat die Antilope gerissen.
• The lion killed the antelope.

4.

to snatch

(Type of weight lifting)

Examples

• Beim Gewichtheben versucht er 100 kg zu reißen.
• In weightlifting, he tries to snatch 100 kg.

Word Family

Questions and Comments

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4 Comments

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xv

How would you translate “Ich habs richtig gerissen” like here https://youtu.be/RsqCm_yljFk?si=4LyO3PtpLgelyOZW&t=459

Something like “I played it really shrewdly”

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Admin

Emanuel

Reply to  xv

Nice one :)!

“etwas reißen” is a colloquial expression for doing something great.

– Der neue Chef will richtig was reißen.

That means he or she is hungry and ambitious and wants to make big moves.
That’s what she wants to do and hence “have done” looking back.

Funnily, “reißen” is also used in the sense of FAILING a bar. For athletic jumping for instance, when you make the bar fall, you have “gerissen” the bar. So context matters here. Treat “(richtig) was reißen” as a fixed expression maybe. Like … think of reißen in a weight lifting sense. That might actually be where the expression comes from.

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johnathanflaker

I had this nice example from chatgpt example generator:

Der Hund hat das Spielzeug in Stücke gerissen.

The dog tore the toy to pieces.

I get all the meaning from my english sense of word order. However I was looking at cases in the sentence and wondered about “in Stücke“. ‘in’ seems to be a preposition of manner that the dictionary suggests goes with dative, but if that is so shouldn’t Stücke [a noun] be Stücken? Or is Stücke a double accusative with Spielzeug.
Q1. If so how would a language learner know?
Q2. if the sentence was presented to a German native as “in StückeN” how would it feel strange or would it mean something different?
thanks

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Admin

Emanuel

Reply to  johnathanflaker

Sorry, I never saw this comment before now!! Yes, in Dative it should be “Stücken”, but it isn’t in Dative.

You have to think of “in Stücke” as a directed progression. It’s not “in pieces” before and it is “in pieces” after.
So the basic two-way preposition logic applies here, even though it’s not an actual location but a state of being. “in pieces” is the destination, so it gets marked by Accusative.

I have never heard of this “prepositions of manner” stuff to be honest.
But I guess it does make sense because “how” something is talks about the state of it, which is marked by Dative since it’s fixed.

Getting into that state is NOT marked by Dative though, so I don’t think this perspective of “manner” or “not” is all that useful.

I’d go with the two-way-preposition logic… that’ll give you more consistent, coherent answers.

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