• jarfil@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Well, it would come from “ver- schwind -en -ung”, so the closest translation to English might be something like “for-dwindling”… but the English “for-” seems to have lost some of the versatility of the German “ver-”, so the closest modern word that comes to mind is using the “shrink” meaning of “schwinden”, and translate as “enshrinkening”. Ultimately they’d all be synonyms.

      • Schmuppes@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        No matter how much you try to hack the word into pieces, dude: “Verschwinden” translates to “to vanish”.

        • jarfil@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Meanwhile, “to vanish” has several synonyms, and it just happens some can be built following almost the same composition rules.