This post will continue a series of educational articles on our editing company website. Although English, according to rough estimations, has more than 1 million words, its vocabulary lacks some beautiful and handy lexemes that adorn other languages. Here we have prepared a set of 30 foreign words that sound so sophisticated and meaningful that we would like English to adopt them. Maybe, some of these words will inspire you to study another language or give an idea for a nickname on the web, who knows?
1. Gluggaveður (Icelandic)
Gluggaveður means the type of weather that is very pleasant to look at out of a window, but that evokes no desire to go out. It is natural that this word comes from Iceland. The country is famous for its landscapes and weather variety, but America has its elements too. We find this word very beautiful for the English language.
2. Farpotshket (Yiddish)
Farpotshket is something that was broken and you decided to fix it up. After that, it became completely out of repair. The word is devoted to jacks of all trades (but masters of none).
3. Yaourt (French)
French people are so fond of singing that failure to remember the lyrics does not stop them at all. In French, the word yaourt means singing along to a song by producing inarticulate sounds that are only distantly similar to the original lyrics. We are all masters of it after a glass or two, aren’t we?
4. Epibreren (Dutch)
This word is super-useful for office workers, but do not mention it in front of your boss! Epibreren can be described as pretending that what you are doing right now is extremely important and keeps you busy, whereas actually you are just frittering away the working time. Here is a little illustration: there is a movie window opened on the desktop and several tabs in a browser with funny stories and comics, but when the boss comes it, you quickly open a document with lots of important data and start analyzing it religiously.
By the way, epibreren is the word our professional editors online would never use since their salary depends on the amount of work and not on the time spent. So, if somebody wastes their time away during working hours, this person probably needs payment per completion – just to boost the efficiency.
5. Shemomedjamo (Georgian)
Americans are so famous for stuffing their tummies with mouth-watering food that we sincerely wonder, firstly, why this word was not coined in the USA, and secondly, why we still do not have any counterpart word in the language. Because Georgian word shemomedjamo means to continue eating delicious food even after feeling full – just to enjoy more of it.
6. Kummerspeck (German)
Here we continue talking about eating habits because kummerspeck describes excessive weight that a person gained due to overeating that resulted from stress. No more nighttime cookies because your essay for tomorrow is not finished yet! Royal Editing will help to edit a text promptly, just in 12 hours. Read more about our services:
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- How Proofreading Documents Saves Your Grades
7. Waldeinsamkeit (German)
This one is a mysterious feeling that a person gets when wandering alone in the wood, surrounded by trees and without a human soul in the vicinity. Only birds, animals and insects will keep you company for the next couple of hours. That is what we call being in harmony with nature.
By the by, what are the most spectacular things one can see in the forest? The next foreign word will give a hint.
8. Komorebi (Japanese)
This beautiful word means sunrays that find their way down through trees. Don’t you imagine yourself in the middle of a forest, where the air is so fresh and the colors are so saturated? Japan has a good eye for nature pleasures.
9. Tsundoku (Japanese)
Although tsundoku comes from Japan too, this word does not seem so beautiful if you know its meaning. It describes a situation when a person buys a book, brings the purchase home and puts on a shelf never to open it again. Sometimes there are whole piles of unread books collected this way, which we consider sacrilege.
10. Embasan (Filipino)
Embasan in Philippines means to take a bath without taking off clothes. May look nice for a photo shooting, but does it really have a purpose in real life?
11. Abhisar (Bengali)
This one is extremely romantic. Abhisar is a secret meeting between lovers. We have this in Hollywood movies so often, but there is still no such word in the language. What a pity!
12. Hikikomori (Japanese)
In Japan, this is a teenager so introverted and unsocial that usually his only pleasures in life are TV and video games. Sometimes we can describe such a guy with words like a nerd or a geek, but they still do not convey the complete meaning.
By the way, we talk so much about the words that English has not borrowed, but we did not mention a single one that the language has actually adopted. If you are interested in 10 common words that English borrowed from other languages, we have found a useful article for you – simply follow the hyperlink.
13. Gadrii Nombor Shulen Jongu (Tibetan)
It looks like a sentence, but the notion is just what we need, so we decided to include this phrase in the list. Literal translation will give something like the following: to give a green answer to a blue question. More generally, the phrase means an answer that has nothing to do with the question asked. Professors witness it a lot during exams, right?
14. Meraki (Greek)
Meraki describes the process of doing your job with passion and desire, putting your heart and soul into it. Most of us would imagine an artist – at least somebody with a creative profession – but the thing is that everybody can have this attitude to what they do.
For example, our editors are always excited about new orders. Assignments are so different, yet each of them opens new horizons for our writers, presents an opportunity for self-development. If you edit your papers at Royal Editing, you know how high our quality is, and we believe it comes from our employees’ passion. Read this article to find out the differences between professional and amateurish work: https://royalediting.com/professional-proof-reading-service-vs-amateurish.
15. Sobremesa (Spanish)
Sobremesa is when you continue to talk at a table even when the meal is finished. We immediately recall happy family reunions on Christmas, Thanksgiving and so on (although the odds of food running out are probably non-existent in these cases).
16. Suaimhneas croi (Gaelic)
Recall the feeling you get after finishing a laborious task that has taken up a lot of time and energy. It is more than happiness, more than relief, more than anything English can describe with its vocabulary. This feeling is called suaimhneas croi in Gaelic, and it definitely has to find its way to English.
17. Hanyauku (Kwangali)
Hanyauku means jerkily tiptoeing on hot sand, which brings sweet memories of a vacation at the seaside and a sense of longing at the same time. Being near water in the midst of summer is great, even in spite of the hot sand.
18. Lagom (Swedish)
We will be laconic with this one. Lagom is exactly the right amount. Just like the amount of text we used to describe this word.
19. Morgenfrisk (Danish)
Morgenfrisk means feeling great after a sound night’s sleep. Do you know who can help with it? Of course, professional writers from our company that will undertake your editing concerns and get finished in one night. Familiarize yourself with different options of proofreading a paper overnight: https://royalediting.com/proof-read-my-paper-overnight-different-options.
20. Tartle (Scottish)
How good are you with remembering new names? Some people resort to special tricks, such as associating a person with things or animals just to make sure they do not forget the name. Nevertheless, from time to time all the efforts go to the dogs, and a feel of panic emerges when you have to introduce somebody whose name slipped out of the memory. Congrats, this is when you experience tartle.
21. Mencolek (Indonesian)
Let’s remember a trick from childhood. Or maybe there are people who still do it? We used to come up to a person from behind and tap him on the opposite shoulder, so that he turns his head in the wrong direction. In Indonesia, people even coined a word for this trick – mencolek.
22. Hygge (Danish)
Hygge will bring you to nirvana, or even bring nirvana to you. This is a situation with nothing annoying, when we can enjoy simple pleasures and stay in harmony.
23. Zhaghzhagh (Persian)
This word is not pleasant, but it describes a practical concept. Zhaghzhagh happens when a person is so frozen that his teeth start chattering. Alternatively, this can occur as a result of rage. In any case, the word is rather useful because it happens a lot not only to Persian people, but to Americans too.
24. Pålegg (Norwegian)
And now we come back to food notions. Are you fond of sandwiches? We are sure we know the answer. In Norway, all the range of products that people can put into a sandwich is called pålegg. Cheese, ham, peanut butter – choose your favorite pålegg and bon appetit!
25. Seigneur-terraces (French)
This word will not sound pleasant to a French coffee shop owner. Seigneur-terraces are customers who spend a lot of time in a cafeteria, but do not order much. Such clients do not bring huge profits, obviously.
We almost got to the end of this article, and you have read about so many sophisticated words. Do you remember at least several of them? If not, learn some handy techniques on memorizing vocabulary on WikiHow.
26. Ya’arburnee (Arabic)
Now, this word from Arabic will send us back to Ancient Egypt, where pharaohs were buried together with their wives and servants. It was not the poor victims’ choice at those times, but if we are talking about the modern world, the desire to die together with your loved one to relieve the pain is called exactly like this: Ya’arburnee.
27. Tidsoptimist (Swedish)
Did you notice the “optimist” part of this word? Literally, it translates into English as a time optimist, or a person who thinks he has more time than he really does. Therefore, tidsoptimists are always late, but for a good reason!
28. Goya (Urdu)
People can hear goya from a good storyteller whose tales sound exactly like reality. Use this word when you begin to believe in everything that happens in a fiction story.
29. Mångata (Swedish)
Mångata is the Moon’s reflection on water surface. This Swedish word makes us think of a romantic evening at a seashore, with candles and old-fashioned lunch-boxes.
30. Prozvonit (Czech)
We will finish on a funny note today, on a single word that describes student’s life in general. In Czech, prozvonit means to call somebody, let the phone ring only one time and then hang up the receiver. The point in this is to make the other person call you back, which finally saves your money. So, students, what do you think about this approach?
We hope everybody enjoyed this short review of beautiful and interesting foreign words. Would you vote for adding them to the treasury of English? If this article was interesting and cognitive, stay tuned for the next updates from Royal Editing. We promise to feed you with juicy language facts and learning practices so that your English always stays at top level. With this company, you will get to know how to use Future Continuous, how to be time-efficient, how to write well and many other useful things. For the most part, we focus on improving our readers’ English, and after becoming a subscriber, everyone will gradually see the results.
If perfect English is exactly what you need for college essays right now, we offer fast and reliable proofreading services online for students. Delivery starts with 12 hours, which puts you in a convenient position for urgent tasks. Our professional editors will work in several directions to ensure high level of consistency, grammar and spelling accuracy and style characteristics. Read more about our favorable editing and proofreading services here: