The German word vergeben and its English equivalent, to forgive, are descended from a Proto-Germanic word, *fragebaną meaning "to give away (a grudge)".
Forgive has a more similar morphology to the German word vorgeben, but this actually means "to pretend" ("to give forward" a falsehood?)
This becomes even more problematic since the Danish for "pretend" is foregive.
The Danish "forgive" is tilgive (essentially meaning "to give to").
forgive (English) = vergeben (German) = tilgive (Danish) = vergeven (Dutch)
E.g. "You're making out that this is a real business."
Something which is "made up" is "pretend" and not real.
E.g. "This whole business is made up!"
You can also say "to pass off" meaning "to pretend", although this usually means that you are pretending something is different to reality in order to "pass" the item or service into the hands of potential buyers.
E.g. "You're trying to pass this off as official merchandise!"
Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed this article.
Forgive has a more similar morphology to the German word vorgeben, but this actually means "to pretend" ("to give forward" a falsehood?)
This becomes even more problematic since the Danish for "pretend" is foregive.
The Danish "forgive" is tilgive (essentially meaning "to give to").
Dutch matches German for "forgive" (vergeven) but English for "pretend" (pretenderen, veizen). Veizen is related to the English word "feign" (pretend).
A quick summary
pretend (English) = vorgeben (German) = foregive (Danish) = pretenderen, veizen (Dutch)forgive (English) = vergeben (German) = tilgive (Danish) = vergeven (Dutch)
The semantics become even more confusing
Another synonym for the verb "to pretend" is the verb "to make out".E.g. "You're making out that this is a real business."
Something which is "made up" is "pretend" and not real.
E.g. "This whole business is made up!"
You can also say "to pass off" meaning "to pretend", although this usually means that you are pretending something is different to reality in order to "pass" the item or service into the hands of potential buyers.
E.g. "You're trying to pass this off as official merchandise!"
Is werdhom doomed?
This is one instance where the werdhom technique cannot help us learn the meaning. 5 words with almost identical morphology (forgive, vergeben, vorgeben, vergeven, foregive) in 4 closely related languages, with 2 entirely different meanings. There is a lot of order and meaning in languages but this is an example of the arbitrary aspect of language.Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed this article.
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