I recently came across a word that I couldn't find a translation for. In Swedish, the word "skallgång" refers to the act of walking in a line formation in a search party.
this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2026
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Kinda a reversal, but I'm curious if other languages have a word as versatile as English's "fuck". Like obviously other languages have words for the verb of making sex, but is it common for it to also be a noun, adjective, or adverb to the point where you could have it as every other word and it still be grammatically correct?
In Dutch, the word "kanker" can be used as verb, noun or adjective. Example: Die kanker hoer kan opkankeren met die kanker van haar. Which best translates to something like: That fucking whore can fuck off with that shit of hers. Except that the Dutch version is wayyyyy more rude and inappropriate.
Fuck the fucking fuckers.
The Hungarian adjective "ügyes". It's used to describe someone when they do something ably/skillfully/cleverly. (Doesn't necessarily imply a learned ability, can be innate.) It usually implies an activity involving manual dexterity, but can also be used for mental problem-solving.
When used as an exclamation, it basically means "Well done!"
Dreich - there is no direct English equivalent. It's weather that's wet and cold and dark and grey and unchanging. It can also mean depressing and tedious for obvious reasons.
Dreary
Dreary is not necessarily wet or cold.
I would never call hot weather “dreary”
Maybe not, but dark, grey, overcast weather might well be dreary. But it wouldn't be dreich.
Ah, so there has to be active precipitation.
I love it, but if I were to translate it to English, I'd say "miserable". Works for weather (miserable weather is wet and cold and dark and bleh), and it covers the other use cases?
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German: Tja
Can mean nesrly anything from schadenfreude to deep empathy
Tja
Isn't that literally "oh, well"? And the intonation changes if thats empathy or schadenfreude.
Curiously, schadenfreude does not translate to English well :)
The closest English word to shadenfreude is epicaricasy, I believe.
Doch
There exists no english equivalent for doch, it has multiple functions, the most known one being an expression that emphatically negates a previous sentiment.
"Does not!"
"Does too!!"
Which created one of the most long lived german memes.
"It should not be that way, but it was."
It fills a big gap in English because there is no single English word to unambiguously answer a question like:
“So you don’t want me to come over this afternoon?”
There would be, if people were able to understand the concept of single negation. But in practice, any single word answer to that question will likely lead to confusion or misunderstanding.
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