Foretage means 'to undertake, to carry out, to make (a formal action)'. It is built on the strong verb tage ('to take') with the prefix fore-, so it inherits tage's irregular vowel pattern. This is a formal light verb: it carries almost no meaning of its own and instead lends weight to an abstract noun — foretage en undersøgelse ('carry out an investigation'), foretage en ændring ('make a change'). For an English speaker it is one of the most useful verbs to know for written and official register, where the everyday gøre and lave would sound too plain.
Principal parts
| Infinitive | Present | Past | Past participle | Imperative |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| (at) foretage | foretager | foretog | foretaget | foretag! |
Foretage is strong, inheriting the ablaut of its parent tage, tog, taget: the past foretog changes the stem vowel to -o-, and the participle foretaget keeps the strong -et. Once you know tage, the whole family — foretage, antage, modtage, deltage — falls into place. See tage for the base verb.
Present: foretager
The present describes carrying out or performing some formal action, almost always with an abstract noun as object.
Banken foretager en kreditvurdering, før de godkender lånet.
The bank carries out a credit assessment before approving the loan.
Vi foretager løbende ændringer i programmet.
We make ongoing changes to the programme.
Lægen foretager indgrebet under lokalbedøvelse.
The doctor performs the procedure under local anaesthetic.
Past: foretog
Politiet foretog en grundig undersøgelse af stedet.
The police carried out a thorough investigation of the scene.
Bestyrelsen foretog flere afstemninger på mødet.
The board held several votes at the meeting.
Present perfect: har foretaget
Foretage takes the auxiliary have — har foretaget. It describes an action performed on an object, not a change of the subject's own state, so have is the correct auxiliary.
Myndighederne har foretaget en lang række kontroller.
The authorities have carried out a long series of inspections.
Har I foretaget de nødvendige rettelser?
Have you made the necessary corrections?
Passive: foretages / blev foretaget
In official and bureaucratic Danish foretage is overwhelmingly passive — the action matters more than who does it.
Betalingen foretages via netbank.
Payment is made via online banking.
Der blev foretaget en grundig gennemgang af regnskabet.
A thorough review of the accounts was carried out.
The reflexive: foretage sig — to do, to be up to
With the reflexive pronoun sig, the verb shifts meaning to 'do (with oneself), be occupied with, be up to'. It almost always appears in questions and negatives, and is neutral in register here (not formal).
Hvad foretager du dig i weekenden?
What are you up to this weekend?
Han foretog sig ingenting hele dagen.
He did nothing all day.
Vi må foretage os noget, før det er for sent.
We have to do something before it's too late.
The reflexive pronoun matches the subject (jeg ... mig, du ... dig, han/hun ... sig, vi ... os, I ... jer, de ... sig); see reflexive verbs for the full set. Note the nuance: foretage sig noget means 'take some action', so foretage sig ingenting is the idiomatic way to say 'do nothing, sit idle'.
Common collocations
| Expression | Meaning |
|---|---|
| foretage en undersøgelse | to carry out an investigation/survey |
| foretage en ændring | to make a change |
| foretage en rejse | to undertake a journey |
| foretage et valg | to make a choice (formal) |
| foretage sig noget | to do something, take action |
The related noun: et foretagende
Worth knowing alongside the verb is its nominal relative et foretagende — 'an undertaking, an enterprise, a venture'. It is common in business and formal writing, and you will also meet the adjective foretagsom ('enterprising, go-getting').
Det var et ambitiøst foretagende, men det lykkedes.
It was an ambitious undertaking, but it succeeded.
Hun er en foretagsom ung kvinde med mange idéer.
She's an enterprising young woman with lots of ideas.
foretage vs gøre vs lave — a matter of register
This is the key distinction for an English speaker. All three can translate "do / make", but they live in different registers.
- foretage — formal, abstract, written. Pairs with nouns like undersøgelse, ændring, vurdering, kontrol. Sounds out of place in casual speech.
- gøre — the neutral 'do' for actions and effects: gøre rent, gøre en forskel, gøre det færdigt. See gøre collocations.
- lave — the everyday 'make / do', informal and concrete: lave mad, lave lektier, lave ballade.
Banken foretager en vurdering, men jeg laver bare kaffe imens.
The bank carries out an assessment, but I'm just making coffee in the meantime.
The reliable test: if the object is an abstract, official-sounding noun and you are writing rather than chatting, foretage fits. If you would say it to a friend, you want gøre or lave.
Common mistakes
The most common form error is regularising the strong past.
❌ Politiet foretagede en undersøgelse.
Wrong — 'foretage' is strong; the past is 'foretog'.
✅ Politiet foretog en undersøgelse.
The police carried out an investigation.
The most common usage error is using foretage in casual speech where gøre or lave belongs.
❌ Hvad foretager du i aften? Jeg foretager bare aftensmad.
Wrong register — sounds bureaucratic; use 'laver' for cooking.
✅ Hvad laver du i aften? Jeg laver bare aftensmad.
What are you doing tonight? I'm just making dinner.
If you do want the casual 'be up to' sense, you need the reflexive foretage sig — bare foretage is the formal transitive verb.
❌ Hvad foretager du i weekenden?
Wrong — for 'be up to', you need the reflexive 'sig'.
✅ Hvad foretager du dig i weekenden?
What are you up to this weekend?
Use have, not være, in the perfect.
❌ Vi er foretaget en ændring.
Wrong auxiliary.
✅ Vi har foretaget en ændring.
We have made a change.
Now practice Danish
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Start learning Danish→Related Topics
- TageA2 — Full reference for the strong verb tage ('to take'), the silent -g, and its central role in talking about transport.
- Collocations with GøreB2 — The fixed expressions built on gøre ('do/make') — gøre rent, gøre ondt, gøre indtryk, gøre opmærksom på — and the gøre-versus-lave split that English speakers struggle with.
- Reflexive VerbsA2 — Inherently reflexive Danish verbs that always need sig/mig/dig — glæde sig, skynde sig, sætte sig, føle sig, gifte sig, more sig, lægge sig — and how they differ from reciprocals.
- Strong Verbs: Ablaut PatternsA2 — Danish strong verbs form their past by changing the stem vowel — learn the major ablaut series as families to turn memorisation into pattern recognition.