uff da

Hello and welcome to Word of the Week! I’m your host, Liz. This podcast is dedicated to words and phrases that are untranslatable into English. Let’s discover the nuance of the world’s languages, shall we?

This week’s word is uffda. A Swedish word is ‘a word of sympathy, used when someone else is in pain’. Every language has a word that is used when you’re suddenly attacked by pain. In English it’s ouch! Well, that’s the polite word anyway. But this word is different indeed.

It’s not what you say when you experience pain, it’s what you say when someone else experiences pain. And such an onomatopoeic word it is: uffda. It’s one big sigh, isn’t it? Personally, I say it very often and I suspect it would catch on very quickly. Just as Gesundheit has caught on for what to say when someone else sneezes. 

Try using it the next time you have the opportunity, see what happens. At worst, you’ll get a puzzled look. At best, you’ll raise the level of compassion in the world. And that’s not such a bad thing to aim for. 

And with that word, dear listeners, this half-year season of Word of the Week is coming to a close. As the New Year approaches, hopefully you have a plethora of new words from around the world to use in your daily life. From the grand words regarding life itself (hozh’q, sabsung, maya), to the very nuanced words for daily living (fucha, ponte, Drachenfutter), there is so much more out there to learn. 

Here’s to this week… and the many more to come in 2025! May you all endeavor to adopt this Word of the Week and all the other words this season, to see the world a little bit differently. Thank you for listening!