In Finnish we have “kissanristiäiset” (literally means a cat’s christening), which means some trivial and meaningless celebration/event.

  • silly goose meekah
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    31 year ago

    It’s called a composite word. English has them too, like schoolbus, but German just went crazy with them. Feels like every other word is a composite

    Flugzeug = flying stuff = plane

    Glühbirne = glowing pear = light bulb

    But some examples just take it on a whole other level. Like “Rindfleisch­etikettierungs­überwachungs­aufgaben­übertragungs­gesetz”, meaning “Beef labeling supervision duties delegation law”.

    • Fonzie!
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      fedilink
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      1 year ago

      TBF English has words like “backpack”, which then get turned into a verb like “to go backpacking”.

      But in some Germanic language like German (Dutch too), you should write all words that describe one noun together as one, which leads to words like huttentuttententoonstelling.