English Translation
She was vomiting all night.
On Reverso Context, I don’t see “gebrochen” meaning “vomited”. However, I do see “erbrochen” with this meaning. Is it a better word choice?
“gebrochen” is just the participle of “brechen”. (brechen → hat gebrochen)
See meaning #3: brechen - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
It’s a perfectly normal vocab choice here.
“erbrechen” also works. I’d say it’s more formal. See erbrechen - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
With the “er-” prefix, this maybe corresponds more to “to throw up”, as it slightly emphasizes the production of the vomit matter, which is also referred to as “das Erbrochene”. It’s also transitive, as can be seen from the example “Er erbricht Blut” and wiktionary saying “to vomit (something) (out)”, or it can be reflexive. To my ears, using it intransitively sounds weird, but wiktionary says it can be used like that.
Another option would be “kotzen”, which I guess corresponds to “to puke” and is very informal.
So the sentence would become: Sie hat die ganze Nacht gekotzt.
3 Likes
Many thanks for the detailed answer!
1 Like
You can also say
“Sie hat sich die ganze Nacht übergeben.”
“sich übergeben” is a good middle ground between
- the “vulgar”/colloquial (though common) “kotzen” and
- the (very) formal “brechen”/“erbrechen”.
3 Likes