dürfen
Meaning in English: may, to be allowed to
Add dürfen and its 6 forms to your reviews. Progress stays in this browser.
Test my vocabularyExample
Kinder dürfen hier kostenlos schwimmen.
Children can swim here for free.
Forms of dürfen in the top 5,000
German verbs change their ending with the person and tense, and each form is counted on its own. These forms of dürfen are also in the top 5,000:
Darf ich das Fenster aufmachen?
May I open the window?
Das dürfte nicht lange dauern.
That shouldn't take long.
Die Gäste dürften gleich kommen.
The guests should be arriving any minute.
Als Kind durfte ich nie lange aufbleiben.
As a child I was never allowed to stay up late.
Als Kinder durften wir lange draußen spielen.
As children we were allowed to play outside for ages.
Er sagte, man dürfe hier nicht parken.
He said you weren't allowed to park here.
How common is dürfen?
dürfen is number 369 of the 5,000 most common German words. In the texts the list is counted from it appears 236 times per million words — about once every 4,200 words. Its most frequent form is darf (#364).
Know every word down to this one and you recognise about 56% of the words in an ordinary German text. A1 means a beginner word, usually met in the first weeks of learning.
Next to it in the frequency list
- 365bekanntknown, well-known; familiar
- 366standstood; was (written)
- 367die Universitätuniversity
- 368binam
- 369dürfenmay, to be allowed to
- 370innerhalbwithin, inside
- 371der SonntagSunday
- 372der OktoberOctober
- 373die Hilfehelp
In these word lists
- The 500 most common German words#369
- The 1,000 most common German words#369
- The 5,000 most common German words#369
- The most common German verbs#80
- German A1 vocabulary#211
Translations, levels and examples were written with AI help and are awaiting review by a native speaker — how the list was made.