Knowing relations between words can help understand their meanings and build a more connected vocabulary network. Here, you can explore parents and offspring and discover the whole family.
- shows how many children or parents the word has
- get the translations and a link
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Sources for Etymology:
- Check "drohen" on DWDS.de
Biggest German Dictionary, great for etymology, usage frequency and collocations) - "drohen" on Wiktionary (English version)
(For etymological connections across European languages. Not always accurate) - Etymonline.com - Origins of English words
My favorite source for the origin of English words.
It sounds stupid, but when I saw the first translation (to impend), my first thought was “that sounds like a word that only exists in dictionaries.” Of course, it’s connected to an adjective that is definitely used (impending), but (again, stupidly) I didn’t immediately connect the two. I saw “to impend” and my brain jumps into verb mode:
“The flood impends blah blah…” – Huh?
The ChatGPT examples definitely made sense and all used “to threaten” as translations in some capacity. I was curious about something, though. Some of the ChatGPT translations used “face the threat of…” which is, of course, a little more uncertain/indirect in English. Is drohen usually or sometimes a little more uncertain? Like, in English…
“The flood threatens the house.” – The water is at the doorstep, we need to evacuate.
“The house faces the threat of floods.” – The house is in Florida, 1 ft. above sea level, and is vulnerable if a hurricane or thunderstorm ever occurs. Probably underwater in 50 years.
I suspect you’re referring to examples like this:
– Dem Politiker drohen 10 Jahre Gefängnis.
– The politician is possibly facing 10 years in prison.
This is a fairly common use for “drohen”, where a potential bad situation is “looming” for someone.
For a direct, immediate threat, the better word is “bedrohen”.
– Die Flut bedroht das Haus.
– The flood threatens the house.
– Dem Haus droht eine Flut.
– The house may/might be facing a flood.
Does that help?
It does! Thank you! If there was a little thumbs up icon, I would click it for every one of your responses. I assume you’d rather not have the extra notifications, so I don’t respond with “thank you”s. :)
You might consider replacing or adding alternate translations to “to impend.” It’s a little clunky, but I think something like “to threaten in a looming/impending way” is more easily understandable.