moin

What it means

1. 1.

   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.

2. 2.

   Doubled as 'moin moin' it is warmer and chattier. In parts of East Frisia there is a running joke that saying it twice counts as small talk.

Examples with translations

• Moin! Alles klar bei dir?

  Morning! You all right?

  Note: Said at three in the afternoon without anyone blinking.

• Moin moin, lange nicht gesehen.

  Hello there, long time no see.

Where it comes from

From Low German and Frisian moi, 'good, pleasant' — so 'moin Dag' is 'good day'. The widespread belief that it is a clipped 'Morgen' is folk etymology, and it is the reason outsiders wrongly restrict it to the morning. Since the 2000s it has spread south as a jokey or casual greeting among younger speakers, but in the south it still marks you as playing at being northern.

Other forms

Spellings and variants:

moin moin, moinsen