Testing and judging claims

Judging a claim in German often ends with saying that nothing stands under it, and the formal way to say so is a small grammar lesson. Die Vorwürfe entbehren jeder Grundlage: the accusations lack any foundation. In this sense entbehren takes the genitive — jeder Grundlage, not jede Grundlage — and the case is much of what gives the sentence its official, final ring. Put the same verb with an accusative and it means something else: Wir können ihn nicht entbehren, we cannot do without him. One verb, two cases, two meanings, and the genitive one lives almost entirely in written judgements, reports and rebuttals. The rest of the list runs along the same scale of confidence, from the cautious anzweifeln through erhärten to Lügen strafen, where the facts themselves give the lie to a claim.