Word of the Month: Der Kummerspeck

We encountered Kummer (sorrow, grief, anxiety) already in Liebeskummer, our word of the month for December 2009. Speck is the fatty tissue people or animals may carry on their bodies.^* Kummerspeck, then, is the stuff that grows visibly around the midriff of people who overeat out of anxiety or grief.


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^*It may be also a byproduct of the slaughtering of hogs, eaten as such or used to flavor dishes; but that's not the meaning in the present context.

Word of the Month: Die Nervensäge

Word of the Month: Index

Nerven are nerves, and a Säge is a saw. Taken together, they refer to somebody or something that gets on your nerve, badly and persistently. A Nervensäge can be strictly a creature of the imagination, like Frosty, the Snowman, or Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer, or something that exists in real life, like a child who's endlessly complaining or a sports commentator who is more in love with the sound of his voice than the game he is supposed to comment on.



BTW The kind of handsaw that was the inspiration for my rendering of a Nervensäge is called a Fuchsschwanz (fox tail) in German.

Word of the Month: Buchschmuck

Word of the Month: Index

We know by now that a Buch is a book. Schmuck means "jewelry", both the precious stuff you possess and the stuff you use to accessorize your person. The Schmuck in Buchschmuck is of the second kind: It's the sum of the graphical elements that have been added to a book's pages to enhance the status of the book as an artifact—the decoration of the title page; the special treatment of the first letters of a chapter etc. These features are not to be confused with illustrations intended to support the text—they have a practical purpose, Buchschmuck has not, in the narrow sense. It does not contribute to our understanding of the text, but it may contribute significantly to our enjoyment of the book as an object—it makes it more precious. I show, as an example, on the left the title pages of the edition of the Grimms' fairy tales that motivated me, in second grade, to teach myself the old-fashioned font called Fraktur in German.



I must confess that I have not seen the term Buchschmuck used in a long time. It sounds old-fashioned, harking back to a time when books were objects that could be considered precious. Are these days gone? Or, to put it differently, could eBooks have Buchschmuck? More generally, could they become carefully-crafted objects to be appreciated as such? I see no reason, in principle, why they couldn't.

Word of the Month: Die Kampfsau, das Kampfschwein

Word of the Month: Index

Just in time for the beginning of the most exciting phase of the soccer year in Europe—The final stages of the Champions League and European League competitions:

Kampf means "fight," a Sau is a sow and a Schwein a pig. Kampfsau and Kampfschwein are terms used in sports, particularly soccer, where they are applied to players who may be technically limited, but more than make up for it by their unflagging fighting spirit, by the abandon with which they risk, not life, but certainly limbs, fighting for the ball and tackling players on the opposing team. And if their jersey is not the dirtiest at the end of the match, they know they haven’t given it their best effort.

Calling someone a Sau or a Schwein in German is an insult, and a relatively bad one. But in combination with Kampf, these words turn into compliments: Kampfsäue and Kampfschweine (those are the the plurals) tend to be fan favorites.



I wonder how speakers of languages that avoid consonant clusters will deal with Kampfschwein, which requires one to enunciate 5 consonants in a row: m • p • f • sch (same as English "sh") • w.

[Source: Wild Things in the German Language: Kindle/paperback version | iBooks version]

Word of the Month: Pleitegeier

Word of the Month: Index

Pleite means "bankrupt" as an adjective and "bankruptcy" as a noun. A Geier is a vulture. In combination, they may denote a person who has gone bankrupt or the precarious financial situation an enterprise finds itself in, like in the sentence, "Der Pleitegeier sitzt auf dem Dach." (The Pleitegeier is sitting on the roof.)

The term derives from Yiddish plejte gejer—"bankrupt goer," i.e., someone who went bankrupt. Folk etymology turned the gejer into a Geier. [Sick 2012]


[Source: Wild Things in the German Language: Kindle/paperback version | iBooks version]

Word of the Month: Spaltpilz

Here's another mushroom (Pilz), but this one is less endearing than the Glückspilz we dealt with in the past. Spalten means "to split" or, if you are in the mood, "to rend asunder". Spaltpilz used to be a botanical term for a bacterium, which, after all, multiplies by splitting. In biology, this term has been replaced by Bakterie in German, but Spaltpilz remains very much in the language in a metaphorical meaning, to denote someone who works hard to split a group into factions.

[Source: Wild Things in the German Language: Kindle version | iBooks version]

Word of the month: Schwein(e)hund

A Schwein is a pig and a Hund a dog. Put the two together and you have a word designating someone who might be called a "bastard" in English. But the meaning can vary considerably depending on context, with a trace of admiration mixed in at one end and a completely derisive, contemptuous connotation at the other end.

I experimented with several ways of drawing the creature in question and show the two I considered the most successful ones—one illustrating the easy approach, where the animal is split into two halves crosswise, and one illustrating a more difficult approach, where the animal is split lengthwise. I have not tried what appears to me to be the most difficult approach, to draw a creature that would result from mating a pig with a dog. One problems is that some dog breeds already look as if they resulted from that kind of union—how does one draw a cartoon of a cartoon? But I haven't given up yet...

As to spelling: The e between the two constituent nouns is optional and can be added to make the transition from n to h easier to pronounce.

[Source: Wild Things in the German Language: Kindle version | iBooks version]

Words of the Month: Hausdrachen, Pantoffelheld

So far, I have resisted posting WoMs that could be viewed as sexist—I briefly alluded to this when, in a discussion about maulfaul, I was asked about an antonym, i.e. a word referring to someone who can't shut up, and I had to answer that these words do exist, but tend to be clearly aimed at women and therefore could be considered sexist. I do not intend to feature such words, but today, I'm making an exception. It was simply too tempting to illustrate the word in question, sexist as it may be. But in order to be an equal-opportunity sexist, I paired it, upon the suggestion of Laraine, with a word that's sexist w.r.t. the opposite gender.

So, here goes: Haus means "house" or "home", and a Drachen is a dragon. A Hausdrachen is a woman who tyrannizes her family, especially her husband—she's a shrew. A Pantoffel is a bedroom slipper, and a Held is a hero (as in Heldentenor). A Pantoffelheld is a guy who talks tough, but takes to his heels at the first sign of danger—he's a hero only in the safety of his own home, unless, of course, he meets a Hausdrachen there. One could say that a Hausdrachen and a Pantoffelheld are a perfectly matched pair, in more than one respect.

[Source: Wild Things in the German Language: Kindle version | iBook version]