Handlung

To speak of a Handlung in German is to speak of an action, a deed, or a plot in a story. It is a thing done. At its heart is the word Hand, which is, of course, the English "hand"—the two words are brothers, descended from the same ancient root. The German word Handlung simply captures the business that hands get up to. But watch what happens when other words are joined to it. Where English might reach for a Latin word like "agency" to describe a person's power to affect the world, German builds it from the ground up: Handlungsmacht, literally "action-power." When a government is paralyzed, unable to get things done, it suffers from Handlungsunfähigkeit, or "action-un-able-ness." It is a wonderfully transparent way to build abstract ideas. The pieces are right there on the surface. We do something similar in English when we speak of a "handout" or a "hand-me-down," but German takes this instinct and builds an entire cathedral of meaning upon it, from the simple Buchhandlung (book-action, a bookstore) to the intricate dance of Friedensverhandlungen (peace-actions, or negotiations).