There’s nothing like learning a silly new word to throw around, or one that captures a feeling you’ve so often had but struggled to precisely name. Funny German words mean we can all be a Hanswurst, plotting some Fisimatenten with Quatschkopf friends. Not quite with us? Read on and all will become clear!
Like many funny stories, ours begins with the 1818 publication of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (The World as Will and Representation) by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.
Schopenhauer wasn’t a jokes man himself, but in Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, he concerned himself with the big questions: what makes a funny word funny? The metaphysician’s concluding hypothesis was that words are funny when they deviate from our expectations, which he termed the “incongruity theory”.
Since Schopenhauer examined the foundations of funny, many have followed in his footsteps. A study from the University of Alberta published in 2016 dug deeper and found that the further away a “nonsense word” is from a “real word”, the more comedic potential we deem it to have. Take, for example, the English words quingle, flabbergast, bamboozle, lackadaisical or peely-wally.
The ingredients of funny German words are no different: repetition, strange sounds, multiple strange sounds, and unique sounds. We take a look at some of the most bombastic:
Dingsbums is a magic word for anyone learning German; it allows you to forget any possible piece of vocabulary and still appear like a native speaker. Dingsbums is the German equivalent of English’s “thingymajig”. You can elaborate further on the word you don’t know, opting for “dingsdabumbs”, perhaps “thingymajiggy”.
Forgotten someone’s name? "Who was that Helmut K…? That guy, you know the one I mean?" Shorten “Dingsbums” to “Dings” for the German version of “whatshisface” or “whatshername”?
Quatsch has earned a place in this list for many reasons. Firstly, its ubiquity means this exclamation is probably one of the first German words you’ll hear and think, “Well, that sounds like a silly word, I wonder what it means?”
Quatsch means all sorts. It can mean “Oh, fiddlesticks!” or “That’s a load of rubbish!” but can also be used as a verb; you may enjoy “quatschen” with your friends, i.e. messing around and chatting rubbish. One or more of your friends might also be a “Quatschkopf” (chatterbox).
In German, a Hanswurst (Hans Sausage) is a foolish character who gets up to all kinds of tomfoolery. A Hanswurst can also be called a Schnabernack, or can get up to Schnabernack (schenanigans) or even Fisimatenten (also shenanigans).
For a long time, people in Germany proclaimed that Fisimatenten was a Germanised version of “Visitez ma tente!”, a French soldier’s invitation to young women to visit their tent for some schenanigans.
The most likely and boring theory, it turns out, is that Fisimatenten comes from the Latin visae patentes (officer commissions). Apparently, being commissioned as an officer was quite the opposite of silly shenanigans, a long and arduous process, but it shared some qualities, such as being chaotic and complicated.
German has some unique words for describing some pretty particular, silly situations.
We’ve all had a Treppenwitz moment; when someone says something to you, you leave the conversation and only later think of the perfect reply that you should have given in the moment.
A Treppenwitz (literally “stairway joke”) doesn’t necessarily have to be a haha-joke. In this context, it is better to understand the German word for joke (Witz) as “wit” or a “witty remark”, in English.
“I came home from meeting Sebastian. He’d confessed that he’d begun an affair with my husband, and I had fallen silent in shock. “A good friend will always stab you in the front,” I thought, while eating dinner later that evening. Goddammit, why didn't I say that to his face!". This is a Treppenwitz.
A Schnappsidee could be seen as the opposite of a Treppenwitz; an “excellent” idea that you came up with when you’re drunk (on life, or schnapps) and later, now that you are sober, you realise that it is actually an awful idea or simply an unrealistic one.
“Maybe I should text that old flame who was a waste of my time in the first place”, or “Let’s run our first 10k in January and a marathon by June!” Some can spot their Schnappsideen immediately after they are uttered; others won’t be able to until the morning after the night before.
Anyone who is not a trained hairdresser but has cut their own or someone else’s hair has likely verschlimmbesser-ed something.
It’s that moment when something’s kind of bad or already quite bad, and you try to make it better, but your well-meaning attempt fails, so everything just gets a whole lot worse.
Certain funny German phrases aren’t what they initially seem…
Germans are not the kind for overenthusiasm. While “Das kann man essen” is not an inherently funny phrase, it is certainly funny to anyone who comes from a country where people are enthusiastic about food and sharing meals.
“Das kann man essen” (“One can eat it” or “It's edible”) is the highest compliment anyone can expect a German speaker to pay their cooking. In English, you might say, “This is delicious” or “It's really tasty!”
“What the hell kind of juice shop is this?” is a sentence in English that one would use only in a highly specific situation. Maybe you’ve just bought an overpriced or disgusting drink in a juice shop, or you go into a self-proclaimed “juice shop” which turns out to sell only smoothies.
In German, “Was ist denn das hier für ein Saftladen?!” can be used much more liberally to mean “This is a lowly establishment” or, more bluntly, “This restaurant/cafe/bar is a real dump”. A “Saftladen” might be run-down, have little stock left, or have unfriendly employees.
Feeling sneaky and playful? Like doing something you know you shouldn’t or promised yourself you wouldn’t? Drinking a small beer even though you’re doing Dry January and it’s only the sixth of the month? Einmal ist keinmal means once doesn’t count or, literally, “once is never”.
Sometimes you hear a silly word and it gives your brain a particular tickle. What is your favourite funny German word? Let us know!
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