fangen.
to catch (grab something flying in the air)
Meaning & usage
to catch (grab something flying in the air)
Der Torwart fängt den Ball.
to catch; to capture (to take hold of a person or an animal)
Die Förster fingen das entlaufene Wildschwein.
to improve in health; do well again; to do better
Es sah schlecht um sie aus, aber jetzt hat sie sich wieder gefangen.
to calm down; to compose oneself
Wenn du dich gefangen hast, kannst du jetzt essen kommen.
to catch (a disease; something unpleasant)
Ich hab mir auf der Kirmes nur ’ne Grippe gefangen.
to be slapped
Sag das noch mal und du fängst dir eine.
Where this word comes from
From Middle High German vāhen, from Old High German fāhan, a strong verb with past forms fieng, gefangan, from Proto-West Germanic *fą̄han, from Proto-Germanic *fanhaną. The present stem fang- is derived from the past forms. This development spread from Middle Low German vangen to Central German dialects of early modern German (compare already Old Saxon fangan alongside fāhan). The same happened in hängen (< hāhen), in which, however, the development was reinforced by the existence of two variant verbs and therefore established itself much faster than it did in fangen. (Still today foo is used in many dialects of Swiss German.) Cognate to German Low German fangen (“to catch”), Dutch vangen (“to catch”), Swedish få (“to get, receive”), West Frisian fange (“to catch”), Danish få (“to get, receive”), English fang (“to lay hold of”), Albanian peng (“to hinder, hold captive”).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.