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DANISH WORD OF THE DAY

Danish word of the day: Tosomhed

The Danish language has a word that could be considered an opposite of 'loneliness', and its range of uses is surprisingly broad.

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.

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DANISH WORD OF THE DAY

Danish word of the day: Kværn

This unassuming little word pops up surprisingly often in Danish, so it's a very good one to have in your vocabulary.

Danish word of the day: Kværn

What is kværn?

Kværn is a noun meaning “mill” or “grinder”, used to refer to any kind of tool or machine that breaks a substance down into smaller pieces.

kværn can be small, for example a peberkværn (pepper mill) or kaffekværn (coffee grinder).

There’s some overlap between kværn and mølle, the Danish word for “mill”. In the past, mølle might have been used to refer to household items like the coffee grinder. It’s now become the reserve of larger pieces of machinery like windmills (vindmølle), but there is stills a bit of interchangeability in Swedish, a sister tongue of Danish.

If you’re in Skåne – the Swedish province closet to Denmark — the word for “mill” in the local dialect is not kvarn but mölla.

Why do I need to know kværn?

The above describes how to use kværn as a noun, but it’s also a verb, at kværne, meaning “to grind” or “to mill”.

Apart from everyday uses like jeg kværner kaffebønnerne (”I’ll grind some coffee beans”), you won’t hear it too often in its literal sense, but it has a lot of figurative meanings too.

For example jeg var så sulten, at jeg kværnede maden uden at sige et ord means ”I was so hungry I gobbled down (literally ’crushed’ or ’ground’) the food without saying a word”.

This can also apply to drinking: han sad og kværnede bajere hele aftenen (“he sat there downing beers all evening”).

It can also be used to describe working very hard, as in jeg skal bare kværne, indtil projektet er færdig (“I have to keep grafting until the project is finished”).

Finally if someone kværner bare løs, it probably means they are talking non-stop.

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