What is tosomhed?

The Danish word for loneliness is ensomhed. It can literally be translated as “onesomeness”, and describes the feeling of loneliness or feeling alone. The adjective is ensom, so if you want to say that you feel lonely, you’d say jeg føler mig ensom.

While ensomhed and ensom refer to involuntary, loneliness – saying jeg bor alene (“I live alone”) does not necessarily mean that you are unhappy about this situation. Jeg føler mig ensom (“I feel lonely”), on the other hand, implies that you don’t really want to be alone.

The word ensomhed is made up of ensom – lonely, which in turn comes from en or “one” – as well as hed, a suffix similar to German -heit which can be loosely translated as “-ness” in English. Other examples of words made up of a Danish adjective with the suffix -hed are nyhed (“news”, literally “new-ness”), frihed (“freedom”, literally “free-ness”) and hemmelighed (“a secret”, literally “secret-ness”).

We’re about to reach the word that is the subject of today’s article: Danish, unlike English, also has a word for being alone with another person: tosomhed or “twosomeness”, which can describe the feeling of being a couple or “twosome”.

Why do I need to know tosomhed?

The use of tosomhed in conversation can be either positive or negative – it can be the feeling of being part of a team, sharing a life together, or it can describe a couple who spend so much time with each other that it is detrimental to their other social relationships. Or, as the Danish dictionary puts it, two people who “live together or are in each other’s company for better or worse”.

Those on the lookout for a partner may say they miss the feeling of tosomhed from sharing their life with someone else, or those recently out of a relationship may describe choosing to go it alone after experiencing that the tosomhed stifled their own independence.

In either case, it’s perhaps not surprising that the concept is identifiable enough to have its own word in Danish. According to European statistics, Danes have the third-highest rate of single-person households in the EU, behind Sweden and Finland. 

Examples

Jeg kan godt forstå, at Rachel blev træt af at se på Ross og Julie. Der gik simpelthen for meget tosomhed i det.

I understand why Rachel got fed up with seeing Ross and Julie together. There was just too much twosomeness going on.

Selvom alenetid betyder meget for mig, er der intet, der kan slå følelsen af tosomhed.

Although I value my ‘me time’, nothing beats the feeling of being at one with another person.