The German verb stellen means to lay/ put/ place, just like the verb legen which I covered in this post. It gets conjugated as follows:
- ich stelle
- du stellst
- er/ sie/ es stellt
- wir stellen
- ihr stellt
- sie/ Sie stellen
The perfect tense goes with ‘haben’ and the past participle is ‘gestellt’, and in the imperfect tense it’s ‘ich stellte’.
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But there are lots of prefixes which change the meaning. The following verbs are separable, which means that the prefix goes to the end of the sentence or clause in the present tense, or the past participle ‘ge’ goes between the prefix and the rest of the participle.
For example:
anstellen – to queue, line up
Wir stellen uns an. – We are lining up.
Wir haben uns angestellt. – We have joined the queue.
Other prefixes are:
- abstellen – to put down, set down
- aufstellen – to put sth up, erect, assemble
- bloßstellen – to expose, embarrass
- darstellen – to depict, represent
- draufstellen – (spoken German) to put on top
- einstellen – to hire
- feineinstellen – to fine-tune
- fertigstellen – to finish, complete
- feststellen – to determine, ascertain, find, see, establish
- freistellen – to exempt, release
- gegenüberstellen – to contrast, bring face to face
- glattstellen – to balance (finance)
- gleichstellen – to make (somebody) equal
- herausstellen – to put sth outside
- herstellen – tp produce, manufacture
- hineinstellen – to put sth in/ into
- hinstellen – to plant, arrange sth
- hochstellen – to put up, raise sth
- kaltstellen – to chill, as an idiom also ‘to sideline’
- klarstellen – to get sth straight, clarify
- nachstellen – to reenact
- queerstellen – to be awkward
- sicherstellen – to ensure, make sure, guarantee
- umstellen – to convert, reposition, reorganise
- vorstellen – to introduce, imagine
- wegstellen – to put away
- zufriedenstellen – to please sb, pay off sb
- zurechtstellen – to posture sth, set sth out ready
- zurückstellen – to reserve sth, put sth back
- zusammenstellen – to compile, arrange
- zustellen – to deliver, to block
The following verbs are inseparable, which means that you don’t need a ‘ge’ at the beginning of the past participle, just use the past participle of ‘stellen’ with the prefix, like bestellt, einbestellt, entstellt, erstellt.
- bestellen – to order
- einbestellen – to summon
- entstellen – to distort (the truth)
- erstellen – to create
- umbestellen – to change one’s order
- verstellen – to adjust, disguise
- vorbestellen – to preorder
I’ve got one more for you, which I hope nobody will ever do to you: Jemandem ein Bein stellen – to trip somebody up
What can you do with these words to remember them?
You can bookmark this post or make a vocabulary list with them. You can do that with any paper or electronic notebook. Or you could buy my notebook which I designed specially for German vocab learners. It has space for vocabulary lists and sentences – very important for these verbs as they change their meaning depending on the sentence! You can even choose one of two colours 😉
If you want to know about German verb conjugation in the present or past tenses, check out my online courses. (Use coupon code BLOGPOST to get 10% off)
German tenses 1 – the present tense
German tenses 2 – the past tenses
