Ehrenmann

What it means

1. 1.

   Someone who did you a solid — held a seat, covered a round, returned the charger. Roughly 'absolute legend', and about as sincere as that English phrase, which is to say half-ironic.

2. 2.

   Feminine Ehrenfrau is used in parallel, and the associated 'Ehre genommen' ('honour taken') is the set reply to a compliment.

Literally: Man of honour.

Examples with translations

• Du hast mir einen Platz freigehalten? Ehrenmann!

  You saved me a seat? Absolute legend.

• Danke, Ehrenfrau. — Ehre genommen.

  Thanks, legend. — Much obliged.

Where it comes from

An old and entirely respectable compound, revived as slang by German rap around 2017 — Capital Bra and Kollegah both pushed it — and named Youth Word of the Year 2018. It is one of the few winners of that competition that genuinely caught on, though by now it reads as late-2010s rather than current teenage speech.

First attested: 2017 in the slang sense

Other forms

Spellings and variants:

Ehrenfrau, Ehrenbruder