{"id":60,"date":"2021-02-14T12:35:33","date_gmt":"2021-02-14T17:35:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/odenzine.com\/?p=60"},"modified":"2022-10-19T16:25:34","modified_gmt":"2022-10-19T20:25:34","slug":"verhaengnis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/odenzine.com\/?p=60","title":{"rendered":"Verh\u00e4ngnis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Photo by Abbas Tehrani on Unsplash.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Das Verh\u00e4ngnis<\/em> (“destiny, doom, downfall” or\u2014my favorite\u2014”undoing”) carves a mysterious path through German. I’d like it to bend in on itself, like an old river, and create a pool of sense, but it doesn’t. According to hoary sources, the progression is from h\u00e4ngen\u2014verh\u00e4ngen\u2014Verh\u00e4ngnis<\/em> (from “to hang” to “impose a punishment\/a curfew, etc.” to “downfall”).<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> See what I mean? How do you get from “hanging” to “imposing”?

I’d like there to be some written report from the Medieval justice system explaining that sentences for a crime were hung on the castle gate. Then I could understand how rulings were verh\u00e4ngt<\/em>. Or, what might be even more likely, that hangings were such a common mortal sanction that a new verb was coined because of them.

I got nowhere, however, in searching for either derivation. For now I’m satisfied with the translation of “undoing” because it is formed from the root verb and a privative: a prefix that negates. I was just flirting with privatives when I wrote, a couple days ago, that verschwommen<\/em><\/a> seems to be the poetic decay of schwimmen<\/em> (calling it the reverse Midas touch-effect). Evidently, there’s a term for that, and it’s “privative.”

Whether ver-<\/em> is actually considered a privative, I don’t know; I don’t think so. It’s not mean enough. But at least Verh\u00e4ngnis <\/em>and “undoing” have a similar root-prefix structure.

Meanwhile, it’s time to get back to paid work, before this blog mir zum Verh\u00e4ngnis wird<\/em>\/”is my undoing.”
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Das Verh\u00e4ngnis (“destiny, doom, downfall” or\u2014my favorite\u2014”undoing”) carves a mysterious path through German. I’d like it to bend in on itself, like an old river, and create a pool of sense, but it doesn’t. According to hoary sources, the progression is from h\u00e4ngen\u2014verh\u00e4ngen\u2014Verh\u00e4ngnis (from “to hang” to “impose a punishment\/a curfew, etc.” to “downfall”). See…More <\/svg><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deutsch","category-german-etymology-deutsch","category-translation-deutsch","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/odenzine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/odenzine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/odenzine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odenzine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odenzine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/odenzine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89,"href":"https:\/\/odenzine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions\/89"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/odenzine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odenzine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odenzine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}