Bock haben

What it means

1. 1.

   To fancy something, to be up for it. 'Hast du Bock auf Kino?' — do you fancy the cinema?

2. 2.

   Far commoner in the negative. 'Keinen Bock' is the standard German expression of can't-be-bothered, and 'null Bock' as a generational label was applied to West German teenagers throughout the 1980s.

3. 3.

   Also used with a verb: 'Ich hab keinen Bock, das nochmal zu machen.'

Literally: To have a billy goat.

Examples with translations

• Hast du Bock, heute Abend rauszugehen?

  Do you fancy going out tonight?

• Ich hab echt null Bock auf die Sitzung.

  I really cannot be bothered with this meeting.

Where it comes from

Not the goat, despite the spelling and a persistent folk etymology about rutting animals. It comes from Romani bokh, 'hunger', which entered German through Rotwelsch — the same route that gave Kaff, Zaster and a good deal of other German slang. German speakers then respelled it as the existing word Bock, and the goat took over the imagination afterwards.

First attested: 19th century

Other forms

Spellings and variants:

null Bock, keinen Bock

Similar terms:

Lust haben