Guten tag, Sprachliebhabers! That’s language lovers in German, my little schnitzels, and danke for joining me for today’s episode of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents! Today we venture to Germany, and I hope you’re wearing your best pair of elastic-waisted pants, because today’s word is: Kumerspeck.

‘Kummerspeck’ is a German word meaning ‘excess weight gained from emotional overeating’. Literally, it means ‘grief bacon’. We’ve all been there. The emotional overeating, I mean, not really sad cured pork.

Kummerspeck comes from the German ‘kummer’ meaning ‘grief’ or ‘sorrow’ and ‘speck’ meaning ‘layer of fat; bacon, adipose’. For example, you could say, ‘sie hat ganz schön Kummerspeck angesetzt’, or, ‘she has been putting on weight through comfort eating’, although I trust you wouldn’t. A related word is ‘Frustessen’, which also means comfort eating, or excessive eating brought about by frustration. 

There is a more common word, ‘Babyspeck’, which literally means ‘baby bacon’ and is a colloquial term for the extra fat babies have when they are little, also referred to as ‘puppy fat’. Sometimes, delinquent children refer to others as ‘Specki’, and though it should mean ‘bacon-y’, just means ‘fatty’. Kids can be so cruel.

Kummerkastentante is another similar word, which is a feminine word meaning ‘agony aunt’, or ‘advice columnist.’  An agony aunt is an informal British phrase referring to someone who answers letters in an agony column, also known as an advice column.

Kummerspeck is regarded as a German word that is difficult to translate easily into English.  ‘Sitzriese’ in another such word, which means ‘a person who appears tall when seated but short when standing’ or literally, ‘sit-giant’. Similarly, ‘sitzzwerg’ is ‘a person who appears short when seated but tall when standing’, literally, ‘sit-dwarf’. Certainly not easy to translate!

Isn’t language wonderful?

Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C Weber

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