voll

What it means

1. 1.

   Totally, really — the workhorse intensifier of German youth and casual speech: voll gut, voll nervig, voll der Stress.

2. 2.

   The construction 'voll der/die/das + noun' ('voll der Hammer', 'voll die Katastrophe') is the distinctive part. It has no standard-German justification, exists only in speech, and is one of the reliable markers of informal register.

3. 3.

   As a plain adjective of a person, voll means drunk — 'der war total voll'. Context keeps the two apart without difficulty.

Literally: Full.

Examples with translations

• Das Essen war voll lecker.

  The food was seriously good.

• Das ist voll der Quatsch.

  That's complete nonsense.

• Er war schon um neun voll.

  He was already hammered by nine.

Where it comes from

The ordinary adjective voll pressed into service as an intensifier, a development of the 1980s that became the defining tic of German youth speech in the 1990s. Unlike most tics of that decade it never went away; it simply stopped being marked as young.

First attested: 1980s

Other forms

Similar terms:

total, mega, richtig