meg-
Appearance
English
[edit]Prefix
[edit]meg-
Anagrams
[edit]Hungarian
[edit]Alternative forms
[edit]- mög- (dialectal)
Etymology
[edit]May be related to Erzya мекев (mekev, “back, backwards”).
Pronunciation
[edit]Prefix
[edit]meg-
- A verbal prefix with the following meanings:
- (original meaning, now rare) back, backwards
- It adds a perfective aspect to the verb in all tenses (a definite endpoint when the action can be considered completed).
- keres (“to look for”) → megkeres (“to locate, look for it until it is found”)
- talál (“to find accidentally, to come across”) → megtalál (“to find (after purposefully searching)”)
- néz (“to look at, for an indefinite time, as an ongoing activity”) → megnéz (“to give it a [thorough] look, assess its quality, form an opinion, etc.”)
- hallgat (“to listen”, or: “to keep quiet”) → meghallgat (“to listen till the end attentively and comprehend, give it some thought”)
- vár (“to wait”) → megvár (“to wait until something happens, someone arrives or gets ready”)
- Not infrequently it can be rendered with the positive degree of an adjective rather than the comparative, expressing an absolute measure instead of a relative one:
- hízik (“to get fatter [than before]”) → meghízik (“to get fat”) (compare also elhízik (“to get obese”))
- hosszabbít (“to make longer, lengthen”) → meghosszabbít (“to make it [sufficiently] long”)
- It expresses the beginning of an action (inchoative aspect).
- It may express a half-perfective aspect:
- It sometimes changes the meaning of the verb in other ways.