ab meaning and definition in german

The predicative use is common in colloquial German throughout the country.
The attributive forms are mostly used in Western and Northern Germany and are considerably less common than the predicative use. They used to be used mostly jocularly, but become gradually more frequent since they are much shorter than the appropriate full verb forms such as abgetrennt ‎(“disconnected, severed”).
The inflected attributive forms retain the devoiced consonant. Hence, sometimes they are spelled with P, rather than B: Appes Bein.