Word of the Month: Die Quasselstrippe

Word of the Month: Index

Quasseln is a verb used colloquially in the sense of "yack" or "prattle," and a Strippe, again used colloquially, is a cord, line, or thin cable connecting two things. In the days when all telephones were connected by landlines, Quasselstrippe was used as a somewhat derogatory, if humorous moniker for a telephone: It was the line used by people to yack away. But landlines are a dying breed, whereas Quasselstrippe is still very much in use today—its meaning has shifted from the instrument used to yack to the yacker him- or herself. It now denotes a person who just won't shut up, on the cell phone, as a moderator on TV, or in any other context where this sort of behavior gets on people's nerve.



I love the term because of the way it sounds, but hesitated for a long time to feature it as a Word of the Month because it is a feminine noun—the implication seems to be that women are particularly fond of yacking; i.e., it could be considered sexist. But on closer inspection, that charge falls apart. The gender of a German compound noun is determined by the gender of the dominant compound, Strippe in the present case, and Strippe happens to be feminine. This gender assignment is completely arbitrary in the same way in which it is completely arbitrary that Wurst (sausage) is also feminine, Schirm (umbrella) is masculine, or Telephon (telephone) is neuter. That is to say, the gender of the majority of German nouns has nothing to do with sex or gender in the biological sense. I believe this is also true for Quasselstrippe—when the term was initially applied to a telephone, it was not because Strippe is feminine, but because a Strippe was one of the essential components of a telephone.

The distinction between grammatical gender and biological sex is sometimes hard to grasp for speakers of English, in which this distinction does not exist. Mark Twain, for example, in his famous essay on the awful German language, just could not wrap his head around this idea (but was able to milk it for comic effect).

Word of the Month: Der Querdenker

Word of the Month: Index

Quer is an adverb meaning "across," and a Denker is a thinker (from denken - to think). In combination, the words indicate a person who thinks independently or "outside the box," as the saying goes. Querdenkerin is the female form. But whatever the gender, the implication is that the ideas of such a person are not always understood or accepted.



Addendum (Jan. 2021 during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic): When I published this post six years ago, I believed that Querdenker had a positive connotation, one that identified a person willing to go against established orthodoxies. That belief has changed. The term has now been hijacked by a movement consisting of a motley crew of pandemic deniers, conspiracy theorists, and plain crackpots, with a good portion of neo-Nazis thrown in (as an effort to rattle the established order), who organize protests against the measures the government established to contain the spread of the Covid-19 virus. I find it particularly irking ("obscene" would actually be a better word) that some speakers at Querdenker rallies style themselves as members of a resistance, even have the Frechheit (nerve) to compare themselves to Germans of the Nazi-resistance who lost their lives in the process.

These people are not Querdenker; they are Nichtdenker (non-thinkers). I don’t think the negative connotation the term has now assumed for me will go away in my lifetime.

New Photobook: Bhutan and Nepal

Bhutan and Nepal 2014

By Ulrich Flemming

It was an unforgettable experience.

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: Fremdschämen

Word of the Month: Index

Fremd is an adjective meaning, in this context, "alien" or "foreign." Schämen is a (reflexive) verb meaning "to be ashamed" or "to be embarrassed." In combination, the words mean "to be ashamed for somebody else who is behaving in an embarrassing way." The verb is used, in particular, if there is some indication that the culprits themselves are not embarrassed, even though they should be. For example, one may conclude the description of the outrageous behavior of some spectators at an event with the sentence, "Ich hab mich fremdgeschämt (I felt embarrassed [for these people])."



The verb appears for the first time in the Duden, the official German spelling dictionary, in 2009. That is, it is of relatively recent coinage, and I was not aware of it until I saw it used some years ago in an online forum. Since then, it has become a favorite of mine for several reasons. For one, it succinctly represents a feeling that overcomes me at times. It also demonstrates, again, the ease with which one can combine seemingly unrelated words in German to capture, in a compact form, some nuanced meaning—apparently, this process is still going on in the German language community.

I am well aware that using our current Word of the Month as a foreign word in English is just about impossible. It is, first of all, a verb, and I have no idea how you would conjugate it in English. In addition, it is a reflexive verb, which makes this task even more challenging (see the example in the opening paragraph). I decided nevertheless to make fremdschämen a Word of the Month for the reasons stated above. People traveling to Germany or reading German papers may encounter it, and students of the German language may find it an interesting neologism in its own right.

Word of the Month: Der Lückenbüßer

Word of the Month: Index

A Lücke is a gap or narrow opening and a Büßer a penitent. However, the ~büßer part in Lückenbüßer derives from a now obsolete meaning of the verb büßen: To improve upon or correct something. So, a Lückenbüßer is someone who fills in for someone else without being really qualified for the job. The term is closely related to Notnagel, our word of the month for 9/2008, where the latter term is, possibly, a little less derogatory than our current word of the month.



Note that in spite of its outdated use of büßer, this compound noun is very much in use in present-day Germany.

FIFA World Cup 2014 in Brazil

I just arrived in Cologne and I'm looking forward to watching as many matches as possible with brothers and friends interested in and knowledgeable about soccer. As I did in the past, I'm creating this post to give friends on the Internet a chance to comment on and discuss matches and prospects with like-minded people.

However, I'll be leaving for Turkey tomorrow to go on a sailing trip until June 20 on my brother's boat, moored right now in Marmaris. I'm sure we'll have many opportunities to watch matches there, but I do not know how often I will be able to comment. I hope this will not deter any readers from putting their two cents in. To start things off, I'm posting an initial comment about the German team and the mood I perceive in the country.