Knowing relations between words can help understand their meanings and build a more connected vocabulary network. Here, you can explore parents and offspring and discover the whole family.
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Sources for Etymology:
- Check "schlimm" on DWDS.de
Biggest German Dictionary, great for etymology, usage frequency and collocations) - "schlimm" on Wiktionary (English version)
(For etymological connections across European languages. Not always accurate) - Etymonline.com - Origins of English words
My favorite source for the origin of English words.
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I was poking around trying to understand “schlimm vs. schlecht” a little better (Future material for a YDG article, perhaps? There are a lot of hot takes on this topic and I imagine some of them are not entirely accurate). I noticed on dict.cc that the top result for “schlimm” was “sad.”
This surprised me – all the other translations make sense together (bad, severe, dire, etc.). “Sad” for me, in English, is a little different. It shifts the focus from the situation being described to the observers / how they would react to it (i.e. getting depressed; crying).
Thoughts on this? Is the distinction I described in English not really there for “schlimm” in German?
I think “sad” is a pretty good fit in something like this:
– Ja, es ist schlimm, das zu sehen.
– Yeah, it’s sad to see that.
“Hard to see” would fit too, I think. “Hard” in the sense that it hits you hard.
That’s about seeing how things were destroyed by the flood in the Ahr Valley. Here’s the full sentence and my best stab at a translation:
– Ja, es ist schlimm, das zu sehen, und noch viel schlimmer, wenn man da aufgewachsen ist.
– Yeah, it’s sad to see that, and it’s even sadder/worse/harder when you grew up there.
Yeah, I added this sense of schlimm now.
I think if we think of schlimm as “high intensity of a negative impact” we have covered all the uses including this “sad to see” one.
Not sure why I never saw this comment in my feed!
Generally, the order of results on dict.cc doesn’t say anything about frequency.
But yeah, like colleussanctus said, the meaning “sad” is from phrasings like “schlimm, das zu sehen”.
As for the difference to “schlecht” – I’d say that the core idea of “schlecht” is “low quality”.
“schlimm” is more about “high intensity of something negative”.
Thank you both for the feedback!
Was doing some Lückentexte and came across this,
Das Problem mit den Deutschen auf der Mallorca ist inzwischen so schlimm, dass viele Spanier sie nicht mehr auf der Insel haben wollen.
Is it correct to replace “schlimm” with
“shlecht” or does it sound weird?
It would sound a bit unidiomatic, “schlimm” is definitely the better pick here.