Dutch

Verb

melken

1. to milk

Inflection

Related terms

• melk

German

Etymology

From Old High German melchan, from Proto-Germanic *melkaną, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂melǵ-. The consonantism -lk- is regular High German. The difference between melken and Milch is due to the fact that the latter used to have a short vowel after -l- (Old High German miluh). Compare Dutch melken, English milk, Danish malke, Norwegian mjølke.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈmɛlkən/, [ˈmɛlkən], [ˈmɛlkŋ̩]

Verb

melken ‎(third-person singular present melkt or milkt, past tense melkte or molk, past participle gemolken or gemelkt, past subjunctive melkte or mölke, auxiliary haben)

1. (transitive) to milk (a cow, goat etc.)
2. (transitive, figuratively) to drain; to draw from (someone or something), especially without consent; to milk (someone) for money, information, etc.

Usage notes

The verb has full sets of both strong and weak forms, either being accepted standard. The past participle gemolken is considerably more common than gemelkt. Otherwise there is possibly a tendency to prefer the strong forms in the northern half, the weak forms in the southern half of the language area.

Conjugation

Strong

Weak

Derived terms

• Melkkuh

Related terms

• Milch f
• Molkerei f

Middle Dutch

Etymology

From Old Dutch *melkan, from Proto-Germanic *melkaną, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂melǵ-.

Verb

melken

1. to milk
2. to draw in, to pull
3. to lure

Inflection

This verb needs an inflection-table template.

Descendants

• Dutch: melken

Norwegian Bokmål

Alternative forms

• melka

Noun

melken m, f

1. definite masculine singular of melk