Word of the Day – “schlagen”

Hello everyone,

and welcome to our German Word of the Day. This time, we’ll have a look at the meaning of

schlagen

The main translation for it is to beat. But that’s not all there is. Schlagen has some really nice prefix versions that take us to surprising contexts like reading books and choosing paths.
And we’ll also discover that schlagen has awful lot to do with sex and gender.
Wait, that sounds REALLY weird.

Geschlecht is what I mean.
The German word for biological sex is Geschlecht and that ties in with schlagen.
Today, we’ll find out why and much much more, so let’s jump right in.

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The core meaning of ‘schlagen’

The number one meaning of schlagen is to beat and just like in English it can for actual punches as well as for the more figurative sense of besting someone, winning over someone.

• Marias Chefin hat sie beim Schach geschlagen.
• Maria’s boss beat her at chess.
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• Maria hat ihre Chefin nach dem Schach ins Gesicht geschlagen.
• Maria punched her boss in the face after chess.
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Maria just can’t take an L, it’s really bad. Once, she lost rock paper scissors to me and she basically Jake Pauled by jaw.
But anyway, so yeah… whether schlagen is about punching or defeating usually does get clear from context,

And that also goes for many of the noun der Schlag, though that one you can find in quite a range of contexts.

The Meanings of ‘der Schlag’

Anyway, the noun der Schlag has a couple more abstract meanings besides a punch but it’s still pretty clear, I think.

• Ich habe meinen Laptop angemacht und einen elektrischen Schlag gekriegt.
• I turned on my laptop and got an electric shock.
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• Auf einen Schlag waren meine Sorgen weg.
• In one instant/ all at once my worries were gone.
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There are lots of really nice and useful compounds around the idea.

• Der Schlaganfall war ein Schicksalsschlag.
• The stroke was a stroke of fate.
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• Thomas würde gerne Schlagzeug spielen können.
• Thomas would like to be able to play drums (lit.: “punch-stuff“)
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• Maria ist sehr schlagfertig.
• Maria is quick-witted (lit.: “ready to punch“)
  (the exact meaning is that someone is really good at finding witty verbal comebacks for an attack)
  
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And then there are of course like a gazillion prefix versions that basically tell us more specifics about how exactly something is being beaten.

• Wenn Maria wütend ist, schlägt sie zu.
• When Maria is angry, she throws punches.
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• Maria schlägt die Windschutzscheibe ihrer Chefin ein.
• Maria smashes (“punches in”) the windshield of her bosses car.
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• Maria hat mein Handy zerschlagen.
• Maria smashed, broke to pieces my phone.
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• Maria erschlägt das letzte Einhorn und schlägt ihm das Horn ab.
• Maria beats to death the last unicorn and hacks off its horn.
  (The idea of “er-” adds here is “out, all the way”)
  

Holy shit… what is wrong with that woman. So violent. And… oh my God, she keeps going…

• Maria schlägt das Buch über Aggressionsabbau auf.
• Maria punches up the book about aggression reduction.
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Maria STOP! The poor book. It did you no harm. Leave it alone!!
Oh… wait, she actually just opened it. That’s what the sentence actually means. Because… there’s actually more to schlagen than just punching.

‘schlagen’ in the context of books

So yeah, aufschlagen is used for cracking up eggs and whipping up cream, but it also means to open in context of books, magazines or chapters. And maybe you have a guess what the opposite is… it is zuschlagen. Oh, and then there’s also nachschlagen, which is a not so common alternative for nachgucken in sense of looking for something in a book.

• Ich schlage das Buch auf/zu.
• I open/close the book.
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• “Du hast in meinem Tagebuch gelesen??? Das ist ein Vertrauensbruch!”
  “Na, warum lässt du es denn aufgeschlagen auf meinem Tisch liegen?”
• “You read in my diary??? That is a break of trust.”
  “Well, why do you leave it open on my desk?”
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• “Weißt du alle diese Daten auswendig?”
  “Nee, ab und zu muss ich was nachschlagen.“
• “Do you know all these dates by heart?”
  “Nah, every now and then I have to look something up.”
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Now, the old Germanic warriors were not only avid readers (according to these sales stats on Amazon.germ) , they were also rough and tough so maybe they really did open and close their books in a very manly way and we’re still right on track with the punching-schlagen. But aufschlagen and zuschlagen are not the only prefix versions with weird, off-beat meanings.

More abstract verbs with ‘schlagen’

The most famous one is probably vorschlagen, which means to propose (we’ve talked about it in a separate article, link below :). That’s still pretty clear once you realize that it’s basically the same as propose, except that in German you don’t just pose something pro… you smash.

But what about abschlagen? We saw that earlier when Maria hacked off that horn, but it’s also a colloquial word for to turn down in context of little requests.

• Wenn Maria so guckt, kann Thomas ihr keinen Gefallen abschlagen.
• When Maria looks at him like this, Thomas can’t turn down any favors she’s asking.
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Or let’s take ausschlagen. One of the meanings is the kicking out of horses, another is for the fingers of a gauge going to extreme values. So far so good. But trees also do it in spring because auschlagen means to sprout (for trees). And while this is pretty much useless, humans have their own kind of sprouting called der Ausschlag… it’s just not as pretty as what the trees do because Ausschlag is acne/a rash.

• Wenn Thomas Tofu isst, kriegt er ganz dollen Ausschlag.
• When Thomas eats tofu, he gets a very bad rash.
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Now, we could think of that as pus “punching” its way outward. Pretty gross, but we’d still have a connection to punching.
But then, there’s also umschlagen.
And this one is NOT about knocking something or someone over. Instead, it is a technical term in economics for turning over goods (in a harbor for example). AND it’s also used in sense of to (suddenly) change for weather.

• Das Wetter in den Bergen schlägt schnell um.
• The weather is changing fast in the mountains.
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Oh and let’s not forget about the noun der Umschlag, which is the German word for envelop.

• Ich brauche einen Briefumschlag.
• I need an envelope (for a letter).
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I have a black belt (with pink dots) in mind yoga but I really can’t come up with some wacky connection to the idea of punching.
If you look at all the verbs we had in this section, it makes way more sense to think of a second core idea. And that idea is … drumroll please… turning.
Think about it… aufschlagen and zuschlagen a books means turning pages. Vorschlagen makes quite a lot of sense as turning an idea forward, an Umschlag is “turned” around the content. And when we have Ausschlag, the skin turns outward.
But the clearest example is einschlagen.
Yes, we had it earlier when Maria went on her rampage, but besides smashing in, it also used for… get ready… choosing paths and directions. Which is basically turning.

• Thomas ist froh, dass er diesen Weg eingeschlagen hat.
• Thomas is glad he took/chose that path.
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• Der Musiker schlägt mit dem Album eine neue Richtung ein.
• The musician goes into a new direction with that album.
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And this (vague) notion of turning doesn’t only help with the prefix versions, it also helps with one use of the stand alone schlagen, which is admittedly rare but super super weird.

• Maria schlägt mehr nach ihrem Vater als nach ihrer Mutter.
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Based on what we’ve learned so far, this sentence sounds like Maria punches her dad more than she punches her mom. And it can mean that… I mean… we’ve seen what a savage Maria is. But what people would normally understand is that she’s more similar to her dad:

• Maria takes more after her dad than after her mom.

She leans, or “turns” more toward her dad personality-wise. And also the noun Schlag can carry that idea.

• Thomas und Maria sind zwei von einem Schlag.
• Thomas and Maria are two of a kind.
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And brings us to the connection with gender, or biological sex.

The Origin of ‘Geschlecht’

The German word for that is das Geschlecht. Looks like it is related to schlecht but it’s actually an off-spring of schlagen. And it’s based on exactly that notion of “leaning, going into a direction” . Originally, Geschlecht was referring to your tribe or your family and was in line with the Latin genus (which comes from a root that’s about origin). And then later, it shifted toward making the distinction between the basic two sides male and female.

• Der Ritter kommt aus dem Geschlecht der Merowinger.
• The knight comes from the house, lineage of the Merovingian.
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• So haben sie mehr Erfolg beim anderen Geschlecht.
• This is how you have more success with the opposite sex.
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• Geschlechtsverkehr ist ein förmliches Wort für Sex.
• Intercourse (lit.: “gender-traffic”) is a formal word for sex.
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So… we’ve seen that schlagen isn’t only about punching, hitting but that there’s also a notion of turning in it. And now the question is why. How did these two meanings get in there? Do they connect in any way?
And the answer is … I don’t know :). Together with the German word die Schlacht (the fierce battle) and the English slaughter and slay, it comes from the super ancient Indo-European root *slak which was about punching, hammering. And that notion of turning, going toward one side was just kind of there at some point in the German word. So you can just make up your own connection, and share it in the comments – the crazier the better :).
Cool.
Now, there’s actually lots more we could mention about schlagen, like several niche uses, more prefix versions and loads and loads or nice nouns and compounds, not least of them the infamous German Schlager, the worst thing in music since The Beatles.
Ohhhhhhhhhh…. that’s right.
But I think we’ve already done enough for one day and more would be a bit overwhelming. I added quite a bit to the vocabulary list below, so you can check that out if you want, and we can talk about all the other schlagen-words and uses you come across in the comments.
I’m out for now, I hope you guys had a fun time and learned a bit and I’ll see you nächste Woche :)
Bis dann.

Disclaimer:

The way Maria was portrayed in this article was fiction. In reality, she is a very loving person with a very kind heart and incredibly sexy hair.

** vocab **

schlagen – punch, beat

der Schlag, die Schläge – the punch(es)
der (Stromschlag) – the electrical shock
der Hitzschlag – heat stroke
der Herzschlag – the heart beat
der Schicksalsschlag – the stroke of fate

der Schlaganfall – the stroke, brain attack
die Schlagader – the artery (big ones)
das Schlagloch – the pothole
das Schlagzeug – the drumset
Schlagzeug spielen – play drums
die Schlagsahne – whipped cream

der Schläger – the bat, rack (sports), also: person who beats up someone
die Schlägerei – the fist fight

der Schlager – specific kind of (bad) popular German music, think Helene Fischer
der Verkaufsschlager – very popular item that sells very well

schlagartig – suddenly
schlagfertig – quick to come up with a witty response, quick witted

abschlagen – turn down (for little requests), hack off

der Anschlag – the terror attack
angeschlagen – a little under the weather, slightly sick

aufschlagen – open (for books and magazines), crack open (for eggs), whip (for cream)
der Aufschlag – the service (in tennis)

ausschlagen – kick (horses), move quickly (fingers of a gauge), sprout (trees)
der Auschlag – the rash
den Ausschlag geben – fixed phrasing for “being the determining factor for the decision”
ausschlaggebend – crucial

einschlagen – punch in, take a turn (in combination with direction)
der Einschlag – the impact (of a meteorite)

der Nachschlag – the second serving (mostly for food, but also used in a figurative sense)

sich überschlagen – flip (for vehicles)
überschlagen – roughly calculate (mostly for costs)

umschlagen – change (only for weather), something boring with trade
der Umschlag – the envelope

vorschlagen – to suggest, to propose
der Vorschlag – the suggestion

zuschlagen – punch (used when we don’t specify a target), colloquial for taking an opportunity, close (for books)
der Zuschlag – the addition (mostly for costs)

zerschlagen – smash into bits
erschlagen – beat to death, also: as an adjective for really tired
beschlagen – fogged (that layer on windows and glasses), also: skilled (as an adjective)
beschlagnahmen – confiscate

die Schlacht – the battle (fierce one)
schlachten – slaughter

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