Offiziellen

Offiziellen is the inflected form of the German adjective offiziell, meaning official or formally approved. It is used to describe nouns that are recognized as being authorized by an authority and appears when the adjective is accompanied by a determiner that requires the ending -en in the relevant case and number.

Grammatically, offiziell declines like other weakly inflected adjectives. After definite articles and other determiners, the ending -en is common: die offiziellen Ankündigungen (nominative plural), den offiziellen Berichten zufolge (dativ plural), der offiziellen Stelle (dative feminine singular), der offiziellen Daten (genitive plural). Without a determiner, a strong declension yields forms such as offizielle Ankündigungen in the plural, or die offiziellen Ankündigungen in contexts that require a determiner.

Usage and nuance: The term tends to emphasize formal status and authority, often appearing in bureaucratic, governmental, or journalistic contexts. It can modify documents, statements, bodies, or data considered sanctioned or verified by an authority. In some kinds of writing, especially headlines or briefing notes, a capitalized nominalized form die Offiziellen may be used to refer to the officials as a group.

Etymology and related forms: Official derives from the Latin officialis via German, sharing cognates with related terms in many languages. The related adverbial form is auch offiziell, used without additional endings, and there are numerous collocations such as offizielle Mitteilungen, offizielle Daten, or offizielle Stellungnahmen that reflect common German usage.