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DANISH WORD OF THE DAY

Danish word of the day: Blunder

Here's a Danish word which might have passed you by if you've been asleep during lessons.

What is blunder? 

The present tense of the verb at blunde, meaning “to doze”, to “be half asleep” or “to nap”.

Like the English “nap”, it can also be used as a noun, en blunder, although this is much less common than the most popular word for “a nap” in Danish, en lur. The latter is a word any parent to small children will be very familiar with.

Old Norse had the word blundra, meaning “to shut one’s eyes”, and the word probably shares an origin with the word blind (unable to see), found in Danish, German and English among other northern European languages.

In Swedish, blunda still means “to shut one’s eyes” and can be used literally or figuratively, an example of how the definition of a word can shift in different directions in closely related languages over time, which often happens if there are other competing synonyms.

Swedish also has the related word blund, which like the Danish blunder refers to a sleep. You often hear it in the negated sense, as in jag har knappt sovit en blund i natt (I barely got a wink of sleep last night).

Why do I need to know blunder?

It appears that blunder is another example of a false friend with the English word “blunder”, which means an error or careless mistake.

While this is essentially true, in some cases blunder can be used in a context which means something close to “blunder” in a figurative sense, although the literal meaning is still to doze off.

For example, a situation in which somebody loses concentration, resulting in them squandering an advantage or position, might be put down to a blunder:

Hun var omkring 50 meter i front da løberne nærmede sig målet, men tog en blunder og blev overhalet i sidste strækning.

She was in the lead by around 50 metres as the runners approached the finish, but fell asleep and was overtaken on the final stretch.

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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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