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SWEDISH WORD OF THE DAY

Swedish word of the day: supa

Here's a Swedish word that may or may not be useful over the weekend, but be sure to use it with caution.

the word supa written on a blackboard next to the swedish flag
This word didn't always mean what it means today. Photo: Annie Spratt/Unsplash/Nicolas Raymond

Att supa is a verb that means “to drink alcohol”, usually with the connotation of drinking to excess, with the goal of getting drunk.

You usually use it without a noun object, so in conjugated form you say han super and not han super alkohol, but you’ll also hear the phrase att supa sig full which literally means “to drink oneself drunk”. En supare is a (heavy) drinker.

But the word has much more innocent origins, shared with the English word “soup” and its Swedish equivalent soppa.

In Old Norse and Old Swedish, supa meant “to drink” and was often used in particular for foods that were consumed in liquid form rather than beverages. One recipe that was popular from the 16th century onwards was ölsupa (beer soup), in which the alcoholic drink was mixed with milk, flour, and sometimes eggs or sugar.

So the verb att supa was used to mean “to eat soup”, but because of the popularity of beer soup, the term gradually came to include other alcoholic drinks too: first, those which were consumed with a spoon, and later others as well.

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Swedish also has the noun en sup meaning “a sip” but used only with alcoholic drinks, in phrases such as att ta en sup (to take a sip, although it doesn’t have to be limited to just a sip). There are equivalent verbs in Danish and German with the same origin: zuipen and saufen.

The related word att insupa has a neutral meaning, equivalent to “to consume”, but this has become more generalised, also meaning “to breathe in” or “to absorb”, so you can insupa an atmosphere.

There’s also the term kålsupare (literally “cabbage drinker”) which isn’t used much on its own, but comes as part of the idiom lika goda kålsupare (equally good cabbage drinkers). You can use this phrase to demonstrate that two people are equally useless or otherwise alike in a negative way. In English, it could be translated as “birds of a feather” or “both as bad as each other”. 

Examples

Jag vill inte supa

I don’t want to drink (too much)

Vi ska supa oss under bordet

We’ll drink ourselves under the table (part of a typical Swedish drinking song)

Villa, Volvo, Vovve: The Local’s Word Guide to Swedish Life, written by The Local’s journalists, is available to order. Head to lysforlag.com/vvv to read more about it. It is also possible to buy your copy from Amazon USAmazon UKBokus or Adlibris.

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For members

SWEDISH WORD OF THE DAY

Swedish word of the day: jordgubbe

If there's one thing Swedes can't get enough of in summer, it's these.

Swedish word of the day: jordgubbe

Jordgubbe is made up of two words: jord and gubbe.

Jord means earth or soil, and it’s also used in Swedish for Planet Earth.

It’s easy to assume that jordgubbe means “earth man”, gubbe on its own being a common word for referring to a male person (usually gubbe refers to someone either very young or very old, and it can be either affectionate or derogatory, depending on the context).

But this is wrong.

  • Don’t miss any of The Local’s Swedish words and expressions of the day by downloading our app (available on Apple and Android) and then selecting the Swedish Word of the Day in your Notification options via the User button

Gubbe is also a Swedish dialect word used to refer to a small lump, so jordgubbe literally means “a small lump that grows in the earth” – more accurate, but less romantic than picturing strawberries as tiny little men who live in our garden and are to be picked and eaten with whipped cream… now that we think about it, “small lump” is probably better.

Strawberries were introduced to Sweden in the second half of the 18th century and were originally called ananassmultron due to their Latin name (Fragaria x ananassa).

The word jordgubbe has existed in the Swedish language since at least 1638, but was then the main name for musk strawberries, later known as parksmultron in Swedish.

Jordgubbar are one of the staple foods on Midsummer’s Eve and Swedes are convinced that they grow the best strawberries in the world.

Example sentences:

Polisen misstänker att gängkriminella har infiltrerat jordgubbsindustrin

Police suspect that gang criminals have infiltrated the strawberry industry

Goda jordgubbar! Är de svenska eller belgiska?

Yummy strawberries! Are they Swedish or Belgian?

Villa, Volvo, Vovve: The Local’s Word Guide to Swedish Life, written by The Local’s journalists, is available to order. Head to lysforlag.com/vvv to read more about it. It is also possible to buy your copy from Amazon USAmazon UKBokus or Adlibris.

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