Then there is the German word for a brassiere. Why have a completely new word for things we put our hands in, when they are really just shoes for your hands? What do gloves and mittens even mean anyway? Moving on from our body to what we dress it in, Germans also like to keep the language absurdly simple. Nowadays Liebfraumilch is produced mainly for export. The name was initially given to the wine produced from the vineyards of the Liebfrauenkirche or “Church of our Lady” in Germany’s Rhine region. We guess that naming a wine after the milk that nurtured the baby Jesus is praise indeed. Translated from German, the name means ”Beloved Lady’s Milk” and refers to the Virgin Mary. Liebfraumilch is a semi-sweet white German wine that dates back to the mid 1700s. While we're on the subject of breasts, this German wine appears to be a rather saucy reference to the teat of the Virgin Mary. It may seem crude to name such a sensuous part of the body after a viral growth, but, hey, whatever makes sense to Germans.Īnd it's not the only term for a body part that sounds a little grim. Brustwarze literally translates as “breast wart”, and yes, it means nipple.
The German language doesn’t mess around when it comes to body parts. Sometimes the meanings are obvious, while others are a little harder to grasp. That's because, rather than inventing new words, Germans are big fans of creating compound words out of existing ones.Ī simple example of this is the German for compound word Wortzusammensetzung (word-together-setting). It may be a tricky language to master, but one of the great things about German is that you don't actually need a particularly large vocabulary.