verschreiben

Word type: ver verb
Based on: schreiben

Perfect (spoken past): hat verschrieben

Preterite (written past): verschrieb

Meanings

to prescribe

(This is actually a literal translation because "pre" is a relative of "ver" and "schreiben" is the brother of "scribe". Only used in the context of doctors. For other "authorities" the word is "vorschreiben".)

How useful:

to misspell, to make a typo

("sich+Acc verschreiben" - the self reference is a must have.)

How useful:

Examples

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The German Prefix "ver-" Explained

'ver' is the most common prefix in German and there seems to be no logic to it. In this article, we'll discover its one core meaning and what we can do with it.

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Word Family

Root: *skribh-

The core idea of the root was:

cutting, slicing

And very early on it was used in the context of leaving markings or making drawings and eventually, writing things.
In the Latin branch, we have the verb *scribere, which meant to write, which is the origin for words like script, prescribe, subscribe, describe and more.

Here’s a (incomplete) list:

script, scripture
manuscript (“to write by hand”)
scribe
subscribe (“to write under”)
prescribe (“to write across”)
inscribe (“to write in”)
describe (“to write down”)
ascribe (“write toward”)
transcribe (“to write over”)
serif, sans-serif (“little stroke, draw”)

verschreiben

Meanings

Examples

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Word Family

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