#monovocalism

[swedishbits]

The word #18: ljushuvud

It’s been 1,141 days since my last post – 681 days quicker than the gap before that! It can only mean that this blog is finally picking up some steam.

The fifth monovocalic word in my series is the noun ljushuvud. The literal meaning is ‘light-head’, but it has nothing to do with low blood pressure, but rather one’s cognitive abilities. It’s best translated as ‘bright person’ or ‘clever person’.

However, as sometimes happens with words like this, it’s often used with a negation (inget ljushuvud ‘not very bright’) or sarcastically, a bit like English ‘genius’:

Vad är det för ett ljushuvud som har kommit på något så urbota dumt? ‘Who’s the genius who came up with this stupid thing?’

Jag var inget ljushuvud i skolan och hade svårt att stava och allt sånt. ‘I was no genius at school and I had problems with spelling and all that.’

Two related monovocalic words are dumhuvud (‘stupid-head’) and brushuvud (‘roar-head’, i.e. ‘hot-headed or quick-tempered person’).

There are also words that use skalle instead of huvud. Skalle is related to English ‘skull’ and has a similar meaning, but it can also be used in a derogatory manner about people. Here are some compounds whose first part is metaphorical, and they can all be translated as ‘a stupid person’:

fårskalle ‘sheep-skull’

korkskalle ‘cork-skull’

pappskalle ‘paper-skull’

tjockskalle ‘fat-skull’

träskalle ‘wood-skull’

There are many parallels in English, like 'airhead', 'blockhead', 'meathead', 'hardhead' and 'fathead'.

In my earlier post about how animal names can be used metaphorically, I mentioned that the verb tjura (from tjur ’a bull’) means ‘to be grumpy, to sulk’. But if you combine tjur with skalle and turn it into an adjective, the resulting word tjurskallig means 'obstinate, stubborn’ – much like English ‘pig-headed’.

And finally: if you use skallig on its own (lit. ‘skull-y’), it means ‘bald’.

The next vowel in this series will be y, so we might look closer at blytyngd ‘lead weight’, nybryggd ‘freshly brewed’, ynkrygg ‘coward’ or even psykbryt ‘mental breakdown’.

[swedishbits]

The word #19: dygnsrytm

Just 279 days after my last post, I’m back with the sixth monovocalic word; the noun dygnsrytm. It can be translated as ‘day-rhythm’, but dygn specifically means the entire 24 hour period. Therefore, the meaning is something like ‘the timing of an individual's sleep-wake cycle’, as the abstract of this study expresses it.

Since Sweden is so far north, the Earth’s axial tilt leads to a big variation in sunset and sunrise during the year, and this can mess with people’s dygnsrytm. Even in the very south of Sweden, Midsummer in June has 17 hours of sunlight while Midwinter in December only has 7 hours. And the very north of Sweden sees midnattssol ‘midnight-sun’ from late May to mid-July, meaning that the sun never sets below the horizon. (Here’s a timelapse example from Alaska.)

Having the short word dygn for ‘24 hours’ means if something is open 24 hours, Swedes say that it’s open dygnet runt ‘the dygn round’. And if you add -a to create the verb dygna, it means ‘to stay awake for 24 hours’.

The last three monovocalisms will feature the exotic vowels å, ä and ö. For å, we might learn more about blåshål ‘blowhole’, påbrå ‘ancestry’, våldsvåg ‘wave of violence’ or tågrån ‘train robbery’.