verkehren

Verkehren is a German verb with several related meanings centered on movement, contact, or regular occurrence. The most common sense today is to move about or to be in circulation, especially in reference to transport, information, or goods. For example, public services such as buses or trains verkehren regularly, and a city can be described as having many services that verkehren throughout the day.

A second, more formal or literary sense refers to social contact or association with people. In this usage, verkehr applies to being in the company or dealings of someone, and it appears primarily in older or more stylistic prose. An example would be a sentence indicating that two groups verkehrten with each other or that a person verkehrte with artists of an era. This sense is far less common in everyday speech today.

The verb is formed with the prefix ver-, a common inseparable prefix in German that frequently shifts the meaning of the verb. The root conveys movement or turning, which underpins the core idea of circulating or going about. The related noun VerkehRk Verkehr refers to traffic, transit, or the broader idea of movement and exchange.

Usage notes: In contemporary German, the circulation sense is by far the most frequent and is found in everyday language about transportation, schedules, and public services. The social-contact sense survives mainly in literary or historical contexts and may sound archaic in modern conversation. The verb is typically used with intransitive constructions when describing movement or circulation and with optional prepositional phrases when describing social contact.

See also: Verkehr, öffentlicher Verkehr, Transportwesen.