prüfen

prüfen is a German verb meaning to check, inspect, test, or verify something. It covers assessing accuracy, quality, or validity and can apply to documents, goods, results, or procedures in various contexts. Common uses include checking documents for completeness (die Unterlagen prüfen), inspecting goods before shipping (die Ware prüfen), or testing a hypothesis (eine Hypothese prüfen). In education, the noun Prüfung denotes an examination, and one speaks of eine Prüfung abzulegen or eine Prüfung zu bestehen.

Grammatically, prüfen is a regular verb. In the present tense: ich prüfe, du prüfst, er prüft, wir prüfen, ihr prüft, sie prüfen. The preterite (simple past) forms are: ich prüfte, du prüftest, er prüfte, wir prüften, ihr prüftet, sie prüften. The past participle is geprüft, used with haben to form the perfect: ich habe geprüft. The verb is transitive and commonly takes a direct object, for example: Wir prüfen die Ergebnisse. In subordinate clauses it is common to use ob or dass: Ich prüfe, ob alles in Ordnung ist.

Etymology and related terms: prüfen originates from older Germanic usage connected with testing or weighing and is the basis for the noun Prüfung (examination) and related forms. Related verbs include überprüfen (to verify or inspect more thoroughly), testen (to test a function or product), and kontrollieren (to monitor or control). The term is widely used across domains such as administration, quality assurance, academia, and everyday life.