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DANISH WORD OF THE DAY

Danish word of the day: Medlidenhed

Today’s Danish word of the day can be used to express the sadness you feel when a loved one – or a complete stranger – is having a hard time.

What is medlidenhed? 

Medlidenhed consists of three parts: med which means ‘co-‘ or ‘with’; lide which is the infinitive form of the verb “to suffer”, and hed, a suffix which turns an adjective into a noun (like -ness in English).

Its closest English equivalent is ‘compassion’, the act of feeling kind-hearted sympathetic concern or sadness for another person who is suffering or has been affected by some kind of misfortune.

You may recognise the lide component from the construction jeg kan ikke lide det, the rather clunky, but most common, way of saying “I don’t like it” in Danish. Literally translated, jeg kan ikke lide det means “I can’t suffer it”. Conversely, if you want to say ”I like it”, the standard phrase is jeg kan godt lide det – literally, “I can suffer it well”.

Why do I need to know medlidenhed?

Today its meaning is figurative, but in the old Norse languages it could also literally mean that a person shared an affliction with someone else, or for example that a body part was affected by pain elsewhere in the body.

The influence of this can be seen in the modern expression jeg føler med dig, “I’m feeling with you”, which indicates that you feel the other person’s pain, so strongly that you are even prepared to carry some of it in a philosophical sense.

The use of at føle (“to feel”) here is worth noting because it is a component of a similar word, medfølelse, which is a synonym to medlidenhed, but has a milder meaning which is closer to the English ‘sympathy’.

You could also say it’s a direct opposite to skadefryd, the sense of joy taken from another’s misfortune, a word which is loaned to many other languages in its German form, Schadenfreude.

Medlidenhed is a Nordic relative to the word ‘compassion’ (which is used in various forms in languages including English, French and Italian) in the sense that ‘compassion’ comes from the Latin com (‘with’, ‘together’) and pati (‘to suffer’, compare to for example ‘The Passion’ which in Christianity refers to the crucifixion and final period of the life of Jesus).

But because at lide is a modern word that – unlike ‘passion’ – is used to talk about suffering in everyday speech, medlidenhed perhaps comes across as more blunt and literal than its English equivalent.

Example

Der var en stor bølge af medlidenhed i den danske befolkning efter at nyhed om naturkatastrofen kom frem.

There was a wave of compassion throughout the Danish public after news broke of the natural catastrophe.

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For members

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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