Geerbten

What does this word mean?

I encountered it in a sentence around these other words: “The old, [geerbten] and the modern furniture.”  From the surface, I deduced that geerbten is a synonym of old and an antonym of modern, that it is an adjective, and that it can describe furniture.  However, geerbten is not in the dictionary.

Fine, says I.  Disregarding the adjective ending -en, the word geerbt looks like a past participle, which means that I would need to find the root word in order to look it up.  To find the infinitive, if the word follows the regular patterns, I must remove the prefix ge- and the ending -t, and replace the original infinitive ending -en.  Now I have the word erben.

Happily, erben is in the dictionary, and it means “to inherit”; and the noun “Erbe,” I learn, can mean both inheritance and heir.  From here I must reconstruct the word, backwards.  “To inherit” becomes the past participle form of the verb “[have] inherited,” which becomes the adjective “inherited.”  It works logically and etymologically.

The old, inherited and the modern furniture stand together with a feeling for style.

The satisfaction of solving the translation puzzle is not quite enough to counter the loss of ten minutes of my morning.  I will rejoice when I am living on the other side of this exam.