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.
- Synonyms: banned, disallowed, proscribed; see also Thesaurus:forbidden
- 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
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.
- 1993, Annette Humpe, “Küssen verboten [Kissing prohibited]”, in Küssen verboten[3], performed by Die Prinzen:
- Küssen verboten (küssen verboten)
Küssen verboten (streng verboten)
Keiner, der mich je gesehen hat, hätte das geglaubt
Küssen ist bei mir nicht erlaubt- Kissing prohibited (kissing prohibited)
Kissing prohibited (strictly prohibited)
No one who ever saw me would have believed it
Kissing is not allowed with me
- Kissing prohibited (kissing prohibited)
Declension
Positive forms of verboten (uncomparable)