Geschah

Geschah is the simple past tense (Präteritum) form of the German verb geschehen, which means to happen or to occur. It is used primarily in narrative or formal contexts. In everyday speech, speakers more commonly use the present tense (es geschieht or es passiert) or the perfect (es ist geschehen or es ist passiert).

Grammatical notes: Geschehen is an intransitive verb and, in the perfect, it takes the auxiliary ist rather than haben, forming phrases like es ist geschehen. The form geschah is the third-person singular preterite. The full preterite paradigm of geschehen is irregular, and other past forms are mainly found in written or historical texts rather than in regular spoken language.

Usage examples: Was geschah? (What happened?) Es geschah gestern Abend. (It happened yesterday evening.) So etwas geschah selten. (Such a thing happened rarely.)

Etymology and cognates: The verb has Old High German origins and is cognate with related Germanic forms in other languages, such as Dutch gebeuren, which likewise means to happen. The term reflects a common semantic field across the Germanic language family related to events or occurrences.

Overall, geschah functions as a literary or formal past-tense option for describing events in German, with es geschah as a common construction in narratives and reported or historical contexts.