Germany · GermanAbsacker
noun · Colloquial · AP-zack-er
A nightcap — the one last drink before bed or before going home, usually something short and usually not actually the last.
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Germany · German
German Slang
German slang is stratified by geography to a degree that surprises people who learned the language from a textbook. A bread roll is a Schrippe in Berlin, a Semmel in Munich, a Weck in Stuttgart and a Rundstück in Hamburg; the tag question at the end of a sentence is ne in the north, gell in the south and wa in Berlin. Alongside that there is a second axis: the small particles — halt, eben, na, doch — that carry no information at all and do most of the work of sounding like a native. Nobody teaches them, and learners who omit them are understood perfectly and still sound wrong.
Two other layers trip outsiders up. The first is Kiezdeutsch, the urban youth speech built on Turkish and Arabic borrowings — wallah, yalla, Digga — which is now general among German teenagers of every background but sounds absurd from an adult. The second is the English that is not English: a Handy is a phone, a Beamer is a projector, Homeoffice is working from home, and a Shitstorm is a polite enough word for a newsreader. The entries below say which layer a word belongs to, and, for the youth vocabulary, whether people actually say it or whether it merely won a prize.
50 terms, each with definitions and worked examples.
By topic
Each page below collects every German term we have on one subject, side by side.
Start with these
The terms below carry the most usage detail — register, origin and the situations where they go wrong. They are the ones worth reading in full before the rest.
All German slang A–Z
50 terms
Terms beginning with A
Alman
noun · Informal · AL-mahn
A stereotypically German German: the one who rings the Ordnungsamt about your barbecue smoke, insists on separating the recycling correctly, and books the sun lounger at 6am. It describes behaviour, not ancestry.
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Use with care
Alter
noun, interjection · Informal · AHL-ter
Dude, man — an address term with no reference to age whatsoever. Older than Digga and slightly more mainstream; plenty of forty-year-olds still say it.
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anbaggern
verb · Informal · AHN-bag-ern
To hit on someone — heavily, obviously and usually without success. The excavator in the etymology is doing real work: the word implies persistence and a total absence of subtlety.
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Arschloch
noun · Vulgar · ARSH-lokh
Arsehole — a genuinely nasty person, not merely a fool. The single most-used serious insult in German, and the register is exactly what the English cognate suggests.
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Use with care
Terms beginning with B
Beamer
noun · Colloquial · BEE-mer
A video projector — the thing on the ceiling of a meeting room. Entirely ordinary German, and entirely opaque to English speakers, for whom a Beemer is a BMW.
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boah
interjection · Colloquial · BOH-ah
The German all-purpose exclamation: awe, exasperation, disgust, disbelief. Length and pitch do all the semantic work — a short flat boah is annoyance, a long rising one is amazement.
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Bock haben
phrase, idiom · Colloquial · BOCK HAH-ben
To fancy something, to be up for it. 'Hast du Bock auf Kino?' — do you fancy the cinema?
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Brotzeit
noun · Regional · BROHT-tsyte
A cold snack meal — bread, cold cuts, cheese, radish, maybe Obatzda — and equally the break in which you eat it. Mid-morning on a building site, mid-afternoon on a hike, or all evening in a beer garden.
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Terms beginning with C
Terms beginning with D
das ist mir Wurst
idiom · Colloquial · dass ist meer VOORST
I couldn't care less; it's all the same to me. Not rude, not aggressive — just a flat statement of indifference, and far more common in speech than the neutral 'das ist mir egal'.
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Depp
noun · Regional · DEP
A fool, a clot. The standard southern German, Austrian and Swiss word for an idiot, and much milder than its northern equivalents — close friends call each other Depp with real affection.
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der Hammer
noun, adjective · Informal · HAH-mer
Something outstanding: 'das ist der Hammer' is the German for 'that's amazing'. Used bare as an adjective too — 'Der Abend war hammer' — which is grammatically odd and entirely normal in speech.
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Digga
noun, interjection · Informal · DIG-ah
Mate, bro, dude. The dominant address term in German youth speech since roughly 2015, and now so bleached of meaning that it functions almost as punctuation.
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Terms beginning with E
Terms beginning with F
Terms beginning with G
Gaudi
noun · Regional · GOW-dee
Fun, a laugh, a good time — Bavarian and Austrian. 'Eine Gaudi' is a specific occasion of fun, not the abstract quality.
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geil
adjective · Informal · GYLE — rhymes with 'mile'
Great, brilliant, fantastic. The default all-purpose German word of approval, and by some distance the most-used slang adjective in the language.
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Use with care
gönn dir
phrase, interjection · Informal · GURN deer
Treat yourself; go on, you've earned it. Said to encourage someone to indulge — the second dessert, the expensive trainers, the day off.
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Terms beginning with H
halt
adverb · Colloquial · HALT
The resignation particle. It marks what follows as an unchangeable fact you have stopped arguing with: 'das ist halt so' — that's just how it is, and there's no point discussing it.
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Handy
noun · Colloquial · HEN-dee
A mobile phone. The standard German word — not slang at all any more, and used in contracts and news bulletins — but it is the country's most famous pseudo-anglicism, and English speakers reliably misparse it.
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Homeoffice
noun · Colloquial · HOHM-off-iss
Working from home, as a state rather than a room: 'ich bin im Homeoffice' means 'I'm working from home today', not 'I am in my study'.
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Hurensohn
noun, interjection · Taboo · HOO-ren-zohn
The strongest common insult in German. Directed at a person it insults his mother, which is precisely why it functions as a fight-starter in a way Arschloch does not.
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Use with care
Terms beginning with K
Kartoffel
noun · Informal · kar-TOF-el
An ethnic German, as seen from outside — the blunter, older sibling of Alman. Where Alman mocks behaviour, Kartoffel names the group.
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Use with care
Kater
noun · Colloquial · KAH-ter
A hangover. 'Einen Kater haben' is the set phrase; 'Katerfrühstück' is the greasy breakfast that follows.
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knutschen
verb · Informal · KNOOT-shen — the k is pronounced
To snog, to make out. Enthusiastic and prolonged, as distinct from küssen, which covers everything from a peck upwards.
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Use with care
Kohle
noun · Colloquial · KOH-luh
Cash, dough. The most widely used German money slang, neutral enough for a workplace conversation and understood everywhere.
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krass
adjective, interjection · Informal · KRAHSS
Extreme, intense, out of the ordinary — and evaluatively neutral. A krasse Party and a krasser Unfall are equally krass; only tone and context tell you whether the speaker approves.
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Terms beginning with M
malochen
verb · Colloquial · mah-LOKH-en
To graft, to slog — hard physical or grinding work, with a note of grievance about it. You malochst on a building site or through a double shift, never at a pleasant desk job.
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Maß
noun · Regional · MASS — short a, as in 'mass', never 'mahss'
A litre of beer in a dimpled glass mug. The standard unit at the Oktoberfest and in Bavarian beer gardens, and the reason people underestimate how much they have drunk.
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moin
interjection · Regional · MOYN
Hello — at any hour. The northern German all-day greeting, from Hamburg and Bremen up through Schleswig-Holstein, East Frisia and into the northern Netherlands and Denmark.
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Terms beginning with N
na?
interjection · Colloquial · NAH — rising tone
A complete greeting on its own, asked with a rising tone: roughly 'hey — how are you?' The expected answer is 'na' back, and the exchange is over. Foreigners consistently mistake it for the start of a question.
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ne?
interjection · Colloquial · NEH — short, rising
The German tag question: 'isn't it', 'right?', 'you know?'. Tacked onto a statement to invite agreement, and used far more densely than any English equivalent.
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Terms beginning with P
Terms beginning with S
Schatzi
noun · Informal · SHAT-see
Sweetheart, darling. The diminutive of Schatz, and the default endearment between partners and from parents to children.
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Schmarrn
noun, interjection · Regional · SHMAR-n
Nonsense, rubbish, tripe. Bavarian and Austrian, and the standard way of dismissing something someone has just said.
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Schrippe
noun · Regional · SHRIP-uh
A bread roll — but only in Berlin and Brandenburg. Ask for a Schrippe in Munich and you will get a blank look.
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servus
interjection · Regional · SER-voos
Hello and goodbye, in Bavaria and Austria. It works in both directions, which surprises learners who meet it as a greeting and then hear it again as someone leaves.
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Shitstorm
noun · Colloquial · SHIT-shtorm
A wave of public outrage, almost always online — a company, politician or influencer 'bekommt einen Shitstorm'. Narrower than the English word, which covers any chaotic disaster.
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smash
verb, interjection · Informal · SMESH
To sleep with someone, or to judge someone worth sleeping with. Youth Word of the Year 2022, and mainly encountered in the game format 'Smash oder Pass' rather than as a free verb.
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Use with care
Spast
noun · Vulgar · SHPAST
Idiot, moron — a disability slur used casually as a general insult, chiefly by teenagers and by adults who were teenagers in the 1990s.
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Use with care
Späti
noun · Regional · SHPAY-tee
The late-opening corner shop — beer, cigarettes, crisps, a bottle opener chained to the counter and often a couple of chairs outside. A Berlin institution, and the reason the city's street-drinking culture works.
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Spießer
noun · Colloquial · SHPEE-ser
A narrow-minded conformist: hedge trimmed to the millimetre, opinions borrowed from the regional paper, deep suspicion of anything unfamiliar. One of the most-used German insults that is not remotely rude.
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Terms beginning with T
Terms beginning with V
verpiss dich
phrase · Vulgar · fer-PISS dikh
Piss off; get lost. Rude but not the rudest — it sits above 'hau ab' and below 'fick dich', and is roughly as strong as the English 'piss off'.
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Use with care
voll
adverb, adjective · Informal · FOL
Totally, really — the workhorse intensifier of German youth and casual speech: voll gut, voll nervig, voll der Stress.
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Vollpfosten
noun · Colloquial · FOL-pfos-ten
A complete idiot — the German for 'absolute muppet'. Contemptuous but not obscene, which is why it turns up in newspaper columns and on daytime television.
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vorglühen
verb · Informal · FOR-glue-en
To pre-drink: to get most of the way to drunk at someone's flat before going out, because club and bar prices make doing it on the premises unaffordable.
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