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DANISH WORD OF THE DAY

Danish word of the day: Large

This Danish word of the day can be rolled out whenever you’re feeling like the bigger person.

What is large? 

It’s not the Danish word for “big”, but can mean a number of other related adjectives: generous, laid-back, unperturbed, tolerant, not parsimonious, or happy to compromise.

While it’s accurate to say that large doesn’t mean “big”, it’s not completely accurate to say that it doesn’t mean “large”.

That’s because clothes sizing uses the same scale as in Anglophone countries, so a “small” is a small, a “medium” a medium, and a “large” is a large, even though these words are not used to describe sizes in any other contexts (apart from some cafes and fast food restaurants).

Why do I need to know large?

It sounds like a loan word from English whose meaning has become slightly distorted on the journey between languages (see the expression fit for fight for a good example of this).

This is not quite the case, though. The Danish large is borrowed from the French large, which comes from the Latin largus: “plenty, surplus, generous”.

So technically it’s the English word that has warped the meaning of the older Latin one, while the version in Danish seems a bit more faithful to the Latin.

Examples

Han ville slet ikke have noget for benzinen, selvom det var en lang tur. Han var ret large.

He didn’t want anything for the petrol, even though it was a long journey. He was pretty generous.

Hun tabte sin telefon og den gik i stykker, men hun virkede ret large.

She dropped her phone and it broke, but she didn’t seem bothered.

Du bestemmer om vi skal spise fisk eller kylling i aften. Jeg er large.

You can decide whether we have fish or chicken this evening. I’m happy either way.

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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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