Word.ws English Dictionary

verstehen

/və(ɹ)ˈʃteɪ.ən/

verstehen noun: a stance that attempts to understand the meaning of action from the actor’s point of view, so that the actor is seen as a subject rather than an object of observation.

Noun

verstehen (uncountable)

  1. A stance that attempts to understand the meaning of action from the actor’s point of view, so that the actor is seen as a subject rather than an object of observation.

Origin of verstehen

Unadapted borrowing from German Verstehen or German verstehen (“to understand, comprehend”).

Questions about verstehen

What does verstehen mean?
Verstehen means a stance that attempts to understand the meaning of action from the actor’s point of view, so that the actor is seen as a subject rather than an object of observation.
What part of speech is verstehen?
Verstehen is a noun.
How do you pronounce verstehen?
Verstehen is pronounced /və(ɹ)ˈʃteɪ.ən/.

Words near verstehen in the dictionary

  1. Verstappen
  2. verstas
  3. verste
  4. Versteeg
  5. Versteegs
  6. verstehen
  7. verstes
  8. Verstraete
  9. Verstraetes
  10. versts
  11. versty

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: verstehen (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-verstehen.wav.

Cite this entry: “verstehen.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/verstehen. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.