verboten
English
WOTD – 3 October 2024
Etymology
Unadapted borrowing from German verboten (“banned, forbidden, prohibited”).[1] Doublet of forbidden.
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˌvəˈbəʊtn̩/, /fə-/
Audio (Southern England): (file) - (General American) IPA(key): /ˌfəɹˈboʊt(ə)n/, /ˌvəɹ-/, [-ɾ(ə)n]
- Rhymes: -əʊtən
- Hyphenation: ver‧bot‧en
Adjective
verboten (not comparable)
- (often emphatic or humorous) (Strictly) forbidden or prohibited.
- 2015 February 27, Laura Kipnis, “Sexual paranoia strikes academe”, in The Chronicle of Higher Education[1], Washington, D.C.: Chronicle of Higher Education Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 22 July 2020:
- Before that, students and professors could date whomever we wanted; the next day we were off-limits to one another—verboten, traife, dangerous (and perhaps, therefore, all the more alluring).
- 2018 August 2, Kara Swisher, “The expensive education of Mark Zuckerberg and Silicon Valley”, in The New York Times[2], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 17 February 2024:
- Or was it because he [Mark Zuckerberg] has since been steeped in the relentless positivity of Silicon Valley, where it is verboten to imagine a bad outcome?
Translations
References
- ^ “verboten, adj.”, in OED Online , Oxford: Oxford University Press, July 2023; “verboten, adj.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
Anagrams
German
Etymology
From Middle High German verboten, from Old High German firbotan, from Proto-West Germanic *furibodan, from Proto-Germanic *furibudanaz.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /fɛɐ̯ˈboːtn̩/, /fɛɐ̯ˈboːtən/
Audio: (file)
Participle
verboten
- past participle of verbieten
Adjective
verboten (strong nominative masculine singular verbotener, not comparable)
- forbidden, prohibited, banned
- die verbotene Frucht ― the forbidden fruit
- Rauchen verboten ― Do not smoke!
- 1929, Kurt Tucholsky, Das Lächeln der Mona Lisa (Sammelband), Ernst Rowohlt Verlag, page 120:
- Für die Massen ist die Nation der Inbegriff alles Mystischen, Imponderabilen, schlechthin Unbegreiflichen – auf diesem Gebiet ist alles erlaubt und kann alles verboten sein, hier wachsen die großen Männer, deren Größe an der Kleinheit der Umstehenden gemessen wird.
- For the masses the nation is the embodiment of all that is mystical, imponderable, plainly incomprehensible – in this area everything is allowed and everything can be forbidden, here the great men grow, whose greatness is measured against the smallness of the bystanders.
Declension
Positive forms of verboten (uncomparable)