Re: OT: Slang, curses and vulgarities

 --- Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> schrieb:
> Actually, there is one common German word that uses
> the stem in its
> original meaning: 'unversehrt', meaning 'unbroken',
> 'unscathed',
> 'undamaged', 'without any injury or damage' (usually
> used for people,
> i.e., cognate to 'sore').  Its morpheme breakup is
> 'un-ver-sehr-t',
> thus negation 'un-' plus the perfect passive
> partiple of a verb
> *'versehren', which is not in use (anymore).
Actually, I was thinking just that; 'versehren' came
to mind when I thought of other words that were
cognate to 'sore'.

> I heard the positive form 'versehrt' only once (that
> I remember): it
> was when someone commented on a terrible train
> accident where some 200
> people where killed, and he used 'all die versehrten
> Leichen' to
> describe what the place was like.  It gave me the
> impression of a
> *very* strong way to speak of 'all the broken
> corpses'.
There's also a song, 'Salamandrina' by Einstuerzende
Neubauten, that uses that word, though I could be
confusing it for the verb 'verzehren' (to consume);
both interpretations make sense to me:

"Wir irren des Nachts [sic] im Kreis umher und werden
vom Feuer versehrt/verzehrt."

Initially, I thought 'versehren' meant 'to sear' or
'to burn', almost synonymous with 'verbrennen'; I
would have imagined two hundred smoking corpses, which
I wouldn't quite expect from a train accident.


	

	
		
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