erfahren

Forms

erfahren (class 6 strong, third-person singular present erfährt, past tense erfuhr, past participle erfahren, past subjunctive erführe, auxiliary haben)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German ervarn, inherited from Old High German irfaran, inherited from Proto-West Germanic *uʀfaran, the verb fahren “to go, travel” with the prefix er-.^[2][3][1] Wiktionary compares Old English āfaran, and Köbler sets up Proto-Germanic *uzfaraną (“to go away”).^[1][4] The Grimms' dictionary, on the contrary, calls it a specifically High German formation without a match in Gothic or in Old English, and takes Dutch ervaren, Swedish erfara and Danish erfare as borrowings from German.^[5] The participle used as an adjective, “experienced”, is the same word.^[2][3]

The original sense was “to travel through, to reach”; from “to get to know a country by travelling” it came to mean “to get to know” in general.^[2][6] Middle Low German ervāren had the same range of senses.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The oldest record, in the Weißenburger Katechismus (about 800), uses arfaran for Latin procedere of the Holy Spirit proceeding from Father and Son.^[7] Old High German irfaran meant “to perceive, find out”, “to overtake, reach, catch”, “to go away” and “to traverse”; it occurs in Tatian, Notker and the Monsee Fragments.^[8][4] Otfrid uses it for overtaking someone, and Notker says that he “had travelled through many cities”.^[7]

Semantic evolution

The concrete senses “to travel through” and “to overtake, catch” lasted into the 17th century.^[7][9] Already in Old High German the verb meant “to find out, get to know”, at first of knowledge gained by one's own effort, then also of hearing something by chance, as in Luther's Sehet zu, das es niemand erfare (Matthew 9:30).^[9] With a passive sense it meant “to suffer, feel”, usually of something unpleasant: Luther has Denn du lassest mich erfaren viel vnd grosse Angst (Psalm 71:20).^[9] From the 18th century the subject is often not a person, and finally the verb became a function verb that paraphrases the passive (eine Überarbeitung erfahren “to be revised”).^[9][3]

The participle erfahren became an adjective, first “widely travelled”, then “experienced, versed”.^[10][9] Kluge and Duden date the adjective from the 15th century, Paul from the 13th, and the revised Grimm quotes der wol ervarne Tristant from about 1285/90.^{[2][6][9][10]} Erfahrung (Middle High German ervarunge) first meant “wandering through, exploration”.^[3] Regionally the verb also meant “to run over” with a vehicle and “to earn by carting”.^[5]

Timeline

• c. 800 – Old High German arfaran in the Weißenburger Katechismus.^[7]
• 863/71 – Otfrid uses irfaran for overtaking someone.^[7]
• Before 1022 – Notker uses it of travelling through cities.^[7]
• c. 1285/90 – The adjective “widely travelled” in Heinrich von Freiberg's Tristan.^[10]
• 1421 – The adjective “skilled, versed” in Johannes Rothe.^[10]
• 1533 – Turmair still uses the verb for travelling through lands.^[7]
• 18th century – The verb is used more often with a subject that is not a person.^[9]

Meanings

Verb

1. To learn, find out, come to know: Sie erfuhr die Neuigkeit erst am Abend.^[11][1]
2. (formal) To experience in oneself, to undergo: viel Freundlichkeit erfahren.^[11][1]
3. (weakened) To undergo a change or treatment, as a paraphrase of the passive: Der Plan hat eine Änderung erfahren.^[11][3]

Adjective

1. Experienced, skilled, versed (in something): ein erfahrener Bergführer.^[1][12]

Word family

• Erfahrung
• Erfahrenheit
• unerfahren

Related words

• fahren

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 254
3. ^ a b c d e f Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
4. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
5. ^ a b Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 3, 788
6. ^ a b Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2014), 5th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin / Mannheim / Zürich: Dudenverlag, p. 257
7. ^ a b c d e f g Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm, Neubearbeitung (1965–2018), ed. Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften and Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, 9 vols. (A–F), Leipzig / Stuttgart: Hirzel, p. 8, 1697
8. ^ Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 96
9. ^ a b c d e f g Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
10. ^ a b c d Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm, Neubearbeitung (1965–2018), ed. Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften and Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, 9 vols. (A–F), Leipzig / Stuttgart: Hirzel, p. 8, 1696
11. ^ a b c Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
12. ^ Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org