anstrengen

Word type: an verb
Based on: streng

Perfect (spoken past): hat angestrengt

Preterite (written past): strengte an

Meanings

1.

to make an effort

("sich+Acc anstrengen" - the reflexive must be there. Sounds more strenuous than "sich Mühe geben")

How useful:

2.

to strain, to exhaust, to wear out, to challenge.

(Only in the sense of an activity being really hard for someone.)

How useful:

Examples

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Word Family

The core idea of this root was:

stiff, rigid

Pretty simple, but it evolved into quite a few different directions.

Here’s an (incomplete) list of English family members:

stark – (“strong, rigid”, shifted toward serious)
starch – (“makes mush thick, stiff”)
stern – (“rigid”)
to start – (“jumping up quickly, stiff muscles”)
to startle – (Same as “start” but shifted toward the cause)
to stare – (“stiff gaze”, same as German “starren”)
starve – (“stiff corpse”, same as German “sterben” – to die)
torpedo – (“make numb”, from a Latin name for an electric ray fish that numbs you. Military name first used for sea mines, because they “sting” your ship)
stereo – (Greek word for “solid”, they used it among other things for “solid 3D perception, I suppose)

The root is also the origin of the Slavic word star-, which means old.

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