Literary studies

The verb that does the most work in this list is deuten, and it splits three ways depending on what follows it. With a direct object it means to interpret: ein Gedicht deuten, einen Traum deuten, and the noun is die Deutung. With auf and the accusative it is a gesture: auf die Tür deuten is to point at the door. Add hin and it becomes evidence: alles deutet darauf hin, dass … — everything suggests that. The three are related, and a seminar uses all of them in one breath: a detail deutet auf an earlier scene, and only then does anyone deuten the whole. Keep them apart in your own writing, because the vocabulary here is built for describing how a text works before judging what it means.