entsprachen

Entsprachen is the simple past tense (Präteritum) form of the German verb entsprechen. It is used with a plural subject to indicate that something matched or conformed to a standard, rule, or expectation. The verb entsprechen means “to correspond, to be in accordance with, to meet,” and in German it takes a dative object naming the standard to which something conforms (for example, den Erwartungen, den Anforderungen, den Tatsachen).

In the Präteritum, the third-person plural form is entsprachen. Example: Die Ergebnisse entsprachen den Erwartungen. In present tense usage, the form is entsprechen (Die Ergebnisse entsprechen den Erwartungen). The perfect tense is formed with haben: Die Ergebnisse haben den Erwartungen entsprochen. The construction is typically used in formal or written contexts rather than in casual speech, where Perfekt is more common in narration.

Usage notes include that entsprachen, like verwandte Formen, governs a dative phrase describing the benchmark and that it denotes agreement between two parts of a statement or dataset. It is often found in reports, analyses, and historical accounts to describe alignment with established criteria or facts.

Related terms include Entsprechung (the noun for “correspondence”) and phrases such as „entsprechen den Vorgaben“ or „entsprächen den Richtlinien.“ Cross-linguistic equivalents exist in English (to correspond to, to conform to). See also: entsprechen, Entsprechung, Übereinstimmung.