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Comment by defen | Hacker News Reader

That's a really powerful story, but also

> kummerspeck (German for grief bacon)

Raises more questions than it answers

It's certainly not a common word in German. In fact, this is the first time I've ever seen it, and all google search results are either dictionary entries or English articles that can be attributed to the Anglosphere's obsession with German compound words.

Source: native speaker, reasonably literate

Might be regional, I certainly know it, I’m from southwest germany.

Bavaria (southeast Germany) agrees. It's colloquial and - maybe regional - but not an uncommon word in my experience.

NRW reporting in, too

Northern germany also knows it. Maybe it has something to do with age. It's usage has declined over the years, I think. Maybe because it belittles the underlying issue, as it sounds rather "cute" to a native speaker. Just an educated guess, though.

It is definitely colloquial and not a word you’d use everyday, but it is in Duden:

https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Kummerspeck

I love how I just automatically accept the German cookie banner without reading it (but understanding exactly what it says). Modern internet ist scheisse.

Hey, there is somebody wrong in the Internet!!!11

It's a relatively common word. I still remember that I first saw it as a kid in a Garfield comic strip ("Lieber Kummerspeck als gar nichts zu Essen").

focus.de: "Die Wahrheit über Kummerspeck - Wie die Seele uns dick macht"

spiegel.de: "Essen gegen Stress und Frust: Was tun gegen Kummerspeck"

bildderfrau.de: "Warum Kummerspeck so gefährlich ist"

...

I would not call it a common word. But every native speaker who reads more than Facebook status updates should have met it. Being an obvious compound of 2 words really everybody knows it does not require any real learning effort, the first time you see it you understand it intuitively.

A discussion about the passing of a great Jazz musician turns into a discussion about a German word about fat.

#onlyonHN

We didn't manage to divert the discussion towards the advantages of Lisp and Rust or the issues with current practices in job interviews.

This is the content I subscribe here for. :)

The other week I similarly saw a conversation about calendar optimization to not look like Swiss cheese turn towards discussing the process of making Greek yogurt.

When you start eating because you are sad, then, given enough time in this state, you will gain weight -> bacon from grief

It still didn't make sense to me so I googled it and found, "Kummerspeck is the name for excess fat gained by emotional eating – specifically, the excessive eating people do in times of stress or sorrow."

    So it literally refers to the _fat_ (speck) someone gains by eating while feeling _grief or sorrow_ (kummer). Except that the specific word for fat they use is the word for _animal fat_ and in some instances literally means bacon. What an interesting word.

https://blogs.transparent.com/german/kummerspeck-frustfresse...

Speck is bacon and also (human) fat. Kummerspeck is the fat you get from feeling bad.

>> kummerspeck (German for grief bacon)

> Raises more questions than it answers

True. As a native speaker I know the word, but the sentence makes little sense to me.

One could gain Kummerspeck (over weeks, months or years), but one could not be looking like Kummerspeck or sitting there like Kummerspeck. Unless in English the word has been loaned and the meaning shifted over time as it sometimes happens with loan words.

One could gain Kummerspeck (over weeks, months or years), but one could not be looking like Kummerspeck or sitting there like Kummerspeck.

One could very well be in the emotional state for Kummerspeck in that state of their lives, which is what is implied here.

Basically parent means: "[Corea] saw in me that I have wanderlust, and that I'm depressed and fat from it".

That is, the parent feels like Corea identified and expressed his personal and emotional state at the time, with his playing....

Man, just coming back to this thread. Thank you for saying this. To add a slight bit more color, I didn’t think of myself as fat and depressed in that moment, more that I had been feeling gorged on the emotions of life and had metaphorically eaten my sorrows.

To me, kummerspeck is the feeling of being unable to distinguish between the tears running down your face or the grease on your chin. It’s a feeling of relishing in the grief of burying someone who would want you to eat a ton of bacon at their funeral to celebrate their life.

Emotions are rarely simple or easy to explain. It’s still worth the effort to try though.

Not sure why English speakers are in love with German compound words but add me to the list because this phrase is wonderful

Spanish has some wonderful compound words as well.

Puzzle = rompecabezas (literally, breaks heads)

mask (like we've been wearing for the last year) = tapabocas (covers/plugs mouths)

half-sleep = duermevela (sleep candle)

There are more, these are just two of my favorites.

As a German it's amusing to me that a translation was given for Kummerspeck, but not for Wanderlust.

Wanderlust is commonly used as a loanword in English.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wanderlust

As an American it's amusing to me that Wanderlust means the same in German, since both words are English as well.

To another German it's amusing that the individual words exist in German and English, but don't quite mean the same things in each language, i.e. are not really translations of each other.

Both wander and lust are also English words, albeit with slightly different shades of meaning, so it should be comprehensible to a non-German speaker who has never encountered it before, whereas Kummerspeck would not be.

Coincidentally I saw a tweet yesterday which said that albeit looks like a German word but isn't

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