Könsdysfori (gender dysphoria), sträcktitta (binge watch), and hantverksöl (craft ale) are in, and uä-barn (child born out of wedlock), åldersskröplig (frail due to old age) and bottenhederlig (honest to the core) are out. Here are some words joining or leaving the official list of contemporary Swedish.
Some 2,800 new words are set to join Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL), the official list of contemporary Swedish words, when a new edition is released later this week, while some 1,500 outdated words have been dropped.Â
The book, which unlike the much more comprehensive Svenska Akademiens ordbok, only includes contemporary words, is updated once every five years, with the last edition released in 2021. As well as refreshing the list of close to 130,000 words, this year’s edition, according to the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) newspaper, has also relaxed the official rules on Swedish usage, with a more liberal attitude to English-style s-plurals and words borrowed from other languages.Â
Unlike the list of new words released annually by the SprÃ¥ktidning newspaper, words need to be considered established before inclusion in SAOL, which is used as the rulebook for what counts as contemporary Swedish, by courts and the media but also by players of games such as Alfapet, the Swedish version of Scrabble.Â
“Words need to have worked their way into the language,” Mats Malm, Secretary of the Swedish Academy, told SvD.
According to the article, the new list includes several other words that reflect changes in Swedish society, including botoxa (to have a botox injection), gruppkram (a group hug), övertänka (to overthink something), tippningspunkt (a tipping point), ekocid (ecocide), lÃ¥dcykel (box bike), and facilitera (to facilitate).Â
It also includes new words that reflect dietary trends and changing food habits, such as sötpotatispommes (sweet potato fries), tryffelmajonnäs (truffle mayonnaise) välkomstbubbel (a glass of champagne or other sparkling wine served as a welcome to guests), and aquafaba (protein-rich water from boiling chickpeas which can be used to make vegan meringues).Â
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The words that are judged to have fallen out of use include kaffejunta (an informal group of powerful people who network over coffee), direktörsvilla (a large house), sedeltankning (stuffing something or someone with bundles of banknotes either in actual bribery or a legal variant that comes close) and giftblanderska (literally “female poisoner”, a sexist term for a difficult, scheming woman).Â
