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I’m having a very hard time looking up the infinitive of this verb from Aschenputtel:

Darauf tat sie die Augen zu und verschied.

Google Translate renders this as:

Then she opened her eyes and left.

Is this translation correct? And if it is, what is the infinitive of the verb verschied? I cannot find it anywhere. I assume this is the 3rd-person singular past tense.

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    Are you sure it was translated as "opened her eyes"? Should be "closed her eyes".
    – Robert
    Commented Sep 15, 2017 at 2:48
  • It was translated that way. You can copy/paste the sentence into Google Translate and see for yourself.
    – ktm5124
    Commented Sep 15, 2017 at 2:49
  • I'm very glad you made that correction, though, as I too was suspicious.
    – ktm5124
    Commented Sep 15, 2017 at 2:50
  • Google translate returns "... closed her eyes ...".
    – Björn Friedrich
    Commented Sep 15, 2017 at 5:24
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    de.wiktionary.org/wiki/verschied
    – Carsten S
    Commented Sep 15, 2017 at 5:33

2 Answers 2

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The infinitive is "verscheiden". It's an old fashioned word for "sterben" (to die). Sometimes you can also see "aus dem Leben scheiden" which means the same, but is less old fashioned and more formal.

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  • Thanks! That's very helpful. I just realized how useful it is to look up scheiden, since verschieden is hard to find (at least on Wiktionary and Collins German-English dictionary).
    – ktm5124
    Commented Sep 15, 2017 at 2:49
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    @ktm5124 You need to look up "verscheiden", "verschieden" is already past tense.
    – Polygnome
    Commented Sep 15, 2017 at 9:13
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The infinitive verscheiden is more closely translated by "to pass away". More important is here that your translation got the eye movement wrong. A correct translation would be "On that she closed her eyes and passed away." Darauf refers to what happened immediately before this sentence, and the preposition zu in the split verb zutun means "closed".

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