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SWEDISH WORD OF THE DAY

Swedish word of the day: doldis

Today's Swedish word of the day is doldis, which is the opposite of the more common word kändis.

Swedish word of the day: doldis
Would you rather be a doldis or a kändis? Photo: Annie Spratt/Unsplash/Nicolas Raymond

Doldis is used to talk about someone who is not a household name and is usually not especially publicity-seeking.

It’s not as unkind or dismissive as saying someone is “a nobody” in English, and in fact you use it in a different way. A doldis is rarely an average member of society, but someone who has a high status or level of influence, such as an important job or rank, but is not yet one of the biggest names in their field. 

So it might refer to a player in a football team, but not one of the club’s big stars. It could be an athlete who competes internationally, but is ranked outside the world’s top 20 in their sport and doesn’t have much of a fan following. Or it could be a politician or businessperson who is close to the top in their field, but few people outside it have heard of them.

Doldis comes from adding the popular Swedish suffix is to the adjective dold (hidden) to turn it into a noun.

Sweden has two words meaning “to conceal”: dölja (from which we get dold) and gömma.

Gömma and the adjective gömd usually refer to something that has actively and deliberately been hidden from view, whereas dölja and dold are mostly used when the hiding could be accidental, for example if something is concealed from view simply because something else is in the way.

This distinction can help you understand what makes someone a doldis: they haven’t necessarily avoided the limelight on purpose, they’ve just not reached it, perhaps because others in their field are better-known or more publicity savvy.

The opposite to doldis is kändis, which refers to someone well known: en känd person means “a well-known person”, so kändis is a snappy way to say “celebrity”. You’re likely to hear the word kändis much more often than doldis because, well, people tend to talk about well-known people far more than they talk about little-known people.

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When you do hear the word doldis, ironically it tends to be because these lesser-known people have done something that suddenly marks them out.

For example, the Nobel Prizes are often handed out to doldisar (remarkable scientists, but not necessarily known to the wider public). 

Sports is another context where it may come up, particularly when a low-ranking team or player suddenly perform unexpectedly well. Doldis låg bakom seger (formerly unknown player behind victory) one headline might read, or doldis blev matchhjälte (formerly unknown player became hero of the match). 

This is because it creates a more exciting narrative that grabs reader’s interests – who is this mysterious hero who’s come from nowhere to steal the match? – than if the headline includes a name most readers wouldn’t recognise. But by the time someone is openly described as a doldis, it’s usually because their star has already begun to rise.

Examples

Flera doldisar har blivit ministrar

Several little-known people have become ministers

Doldis tar över på Ikea

An unknown person takes over the reins at Ikea (a Dagens Industri headline)

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

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SWEDISH WORD OF THE DAY

Swedish word of the day: shit

Before you get offended by this potty-mouthed word of the day, we should probably tell you that this English swear word is a lot milder in Swedish.

Swedish word of the day: shit

The word shit in Swedish is, as you may have guessed, a loanword from English. It has its roots in Middle English schit and scythe, meaning “dung”, which in turn originated in a Proto-Indo-European word meaning to split, divide or separate.

There are a number of words in other European languages which have the same root, like schijt in Dutch, Scheiße in German, skidt in Danish, skit/skitt in Norwegian and the Swedish word skit.

So, why does Swedish have two words for shit? Essentially, they’re used (and pronounced) in different ways.

Shit, pronounced similarly to the English word but in a Swedish accent, is essentially only used as an exclamation, whether that’s for something good or bad, and most adults in Sweden wouldn’t bat an eyelid if they heard a small child saying it. 

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It normally indicates some sort of surprise or shock, similar to “wow” or “oh my god” in English. You might also hear it in the phrase shit pommes frites, which literally translates as “shit, French fries!” which a Swedish speaker might use to express surprise: shit pommes frites, har du fått en ny mobil?! (“shit French fries, have you got a new phone?!”)

If you accidentally bumped into someone in a queue, for example, you could say shit, förlåt (shit, sorry), and if you came to some sort of realisation, you could say oj shit! (oh shit!). In general, saying shit would be acceptable even in professional situations with Swedes.

Skit, on the other hand, is pronounced with the sort of whooshing sj or sk-sound at the beginning, kind of like the word wheat, but with a whistle at the start.

It’s used in Swedish in broadly the same ways you’d use shit in English, both in the sense of actual faeces (as a noun and a verb) but also as a vulgar way to describe some sort of undesirable material or thing: jag har tröttnat på den här skiten (I’m tired of this shit) or ta bort din skit från bordet (take your shit off the table).

You may also have come across it in the term skit samma (the milder variant would be strunt samma), which can be translated as “never mind” or “forget it”, or skit också if something unfortunate happens (skit också, jag missade bussen – damn it, I missed the bus).

You can also describe something as being skit, use it in phrases like jag förstår inte ett skit (I don’t understand shit) and as an intensifier: han bankade skiten ur honom (he beat the shit out of him).

In contrast to shit, skit is generally considered less acceptable to use in a professional situation… although you will probably still hear children say it.

Example sentences:

Oj shit, spelar du in det här? 

Oh shit, are you recording this?

Ska vi inte åka snart? Shit, ja, klockan är redan 12!

Shouldn’t we leave soon? Shit, yeah, it’s already 12 o’clock!

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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