empfiehlest

Empfiehlest is the second-person singular present tense form of the German verb empfehlen, used in archaic or stylistically old-fashioned spellings. In contemporary standard German, the corresponding form is empfiehlst. The verb itself means to advise, suggest, or recommend something to someone.

Historically, German allowed an ending -est for the second person singular, resulting in empfiehlest. In modern usage, the preferred ending is -st, yielding empfiehlst. The stem vowel also shows the irregular umlaut pattern common to empfehlen: ich empfehle, du empfiehlst, er empfiehlt, wir empfehlen, ihr empfehlt, sie empfehlen. The adjectival form empfiehlest therefore appears mainly in texts that aim to evoke an older period or in certain dialectal writings.

Usage and examples: A sentence in historical or literary style might read: Du empfiehlest mir dieses Buch. In everyday modern German this would typically be: Du empfiehlst mir dieses Buch. Although grammatically understandable to readers of older texts, empfiehlest is rarely used in contemporary writing unless a historical or stylized tone is intended.

Etymology and related forms: empfiehlen is a prefixal verb derived from the stem empf-, with the full present tense built from the base empfehlen plus standard personal endings. The form empfiehlst reflects the modern du-ending, while empfiehlest represents a bygone orthography.

See also: empfehlen, German verb conjugation, Old High German and Early New High German verb forms.