üben

German

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˈyːbən/
  • Audio (Germany (Berlin)):(file)
  • Audio (Austria):(file)
  • Audio (Germany (Berlin)):(file)
  • Hyphenation: üben

Etymology 1

From Middle High German üeben, uoben, from Old High German uoben, from Proto-Germanic *ōbijaną (to do, practice).

Verb

üben (weak, third-person singular present übt, past tense übte, past participle geübt, auxiliary haben)

  1. (transitive) to practice, to drill, to train
    Meine Tochter übt Klavier.
    My daughter is practicing piano.
    Du musst mehr üben, sonst wirst du nie besser.
    You've got to practice more, otherwise you'll never get better.
  2. (transitive) to exercise, to perform; used to form verbal phrases with certain behavior-describing nouns
    Wenn wir fortfahren, müssen wir Vorsicht üben.If we proceed, we must exercise caution.
    Kritik übento criticize, to express criticism
    Rache übento exact revenge, to take vangeance
  3. (reflexive) to practice [with in (+ dative) ‘(doing) an action’]
    Du solltest dich in Rechtschreibung üben.You should practice spelling.
    1. to practice (a virtue, trying to behave in a certain way)
      Sie übte sich in Bescheidenheit.She was being modest.
      sich in Geduld übento (try to) be patient
Conjugation
Derived terms

Further reading

  • üben” in Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache
  • üben” in Uni Leipzig: Wortschatz-Lexikon
  • üben” in OpenThesaurus.de
  • Friedrich Kluge (1883), “üben”, in John Francis Davis, transl., Etymological Dictionary of the German Language, published 1891

Etymology 2

Formed from über (across) by analogy to pairs like unter - unten, ober - oben. [1]

Adverb

üben

  1. (rare, dialectal, Upper German, obsolete) over there, across, beyond, on the other side
Derived terms

References