durchfallen

German

Etymology

From durch- +‎ fallen.

Pronunciation
  • Audio(file)

Verb

durchfallen (class 7 strong, third-person singular present fällt durch, past tense fiel durch, past participle durchgefallen, auxiliary sein)

  1. (intransitive) to fail; not to pass (with regard to some test or examination)
    Ich bin durchgefallen. ― I failed.
    Ich bin bei / in der Prüfung durchgefallen. ― I failed the exam.

Usage notes
  • Unlike English “to fail”, German durchfallen cannot take a direct object. The thing that one fails may be given with the prepositions bei or in + dative case. However, an even commoner construction is fallen + durch + accusative. Note that this is not a compound verb, but a simple verb + preposition:
Ich bin durch die Prüfung gefallen. ― I failed the exam.
  • In order to express that a teacher or examiner “failed somebody”, that is “made them fail”, durchfallen is construed with lassen:
Der Lehrer hat mich durchfallen lassen. ― The teacher failed me.

Conjugation

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Verb

Lua error in Module:utilities at line 142: attempt to perform arithmetic on local 'h' (a nil value)

  1. (intransitive) to fall through
    Das Gitter war zu weitmaschig. Der Ball ist einfach durchgefallen.
    The grating was too wide-meshed. The ball simply fell through.

Conjugation

Lua error in Module:utilities at line 142: attempt to perform arithmetic on local 'h' (a nil value)

Further reading
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