Can you cheer yourself up by focusing on the joy of future fun? Or do you worry, and worry about worry? And do you enjoy worrying? Germans have a nice word for a forward-looking joy, Vorfreude, to describe the feeling of anticipating something you’ll enjoy.

Most of us daydream of holidays and meals and pleasurable events to come, and psychologists even say that is good for us and a helpful practice for lifting your mood, rather than an idle waste of time.  So perhaps we’ll soon start talking about a pleasant daydream as a vorfreudian foreshadowing or a  key part of the psychological practice of Vorfreudianism, though that almost sounds like a blending of Freudian analytical thought with the mechanistic production approach of Fordism, a term originating from the factories of Henry Ford.   Bring on an assembly line for positive thoughts in the unconscious mind! Or could this be a conveyor belt of fears? An American company actually has a UK trademark on the word Vorfreude, for the sole purpose of selling mops! Perhaps customers look forward to mopping up problems…Continue reading full article…

Don’t sniff, but are spicy Brits glugging glue this Christmas? Bountiful bottles of Glühwein selling from UK supermarket shelves might suggest people who come unstuck in extended isolation are reaching for a remedy or trying to put a broken Christmas back together, but in fact this import is the traditional German equivalent of mulled wine, also known as spiced wine, and has no known connection to glue. A humble red wine heated with cinnamon, cloves, allspice, nutmeg and even raisins is a widespread winter drink in Europe and nicely disposes of otherwise undrinkable dregs of cheap wine. Although traditionally this potion goes by different names in different lands, now in English it is flirting with a hot new name from abroad, and we are provisionally adding it to our growing list of German words used in English.
Continue reading full article…