befurchtete

Befurchtete is a historical or archaic German verb form associated with the verb befurchten, meaning to fear or dread something in advance. In modern standard German, the commonly used verb is befürchten, and its forms are befürchtete (simple past) and befürchtet (past participle). The form befurchtete reflects older orthography and pronunciation, and befurchten itself is now rarely used outside philological or literary contexts.

Etymology and forms: Befurchten is built from the prefix be- plus furchten, which relates to Furcht (fear). The spelling befurchtete represents a historical variant without the modern umlaut in the stem and demonstrates older German phonology. The past participle of befurchten would be befurchtet, while the modern verb befürchten yields befürchtet as the past participle. In contemporary texts, befurchten and befurchtete appear almost exclusively in scholarly editions or archaisms.

Usage: Befurchtete occurs primarily in older texts from Early New High German through the early modern period. It is not part of everyday contemporary German usage. When expressing similar meaning today, speakers would normally use befürchten and its standard tenses, for example: ich befürchtete, er befürchtet, sie befürchtet.

Examples of sense: In historical contexts, befurchten could appear in phrases describing anticipatory fear or concern about future outcomes. A modern reconstruction might render a sentence like “Er befurchtete die Folgen” as “Er befürchtete die Folgen,” with the latter representing standard contemporary usage.

See also: befürchten, Furcht, German verb conjugation.