Colloquial German – “drauf sein”

Hello everyone

And welcome to your German Word of the Day, which is also kind of an episode of How to sound more authentic because today, we’ll take a look at the meaning of the phrase

drauf sein

And that is a real colloquial gem that you can use pretty much every day because it’s basically a way to talk about your mood.
Let’s start with a quick primer on drauf itself first, though.

drauf is basically a shortened version of the da-word darauf and the da-words are all in essence the German way to combine a preposition with a pronoun that stands for a “thing” (as opposed to living being).

• Deine fette Katze liegt wieder auf meinem Handy.
• Your fat cat is lying on my phone again.
  
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• “Wo ist mein Handy?”
  “Die Katze liegt drauf.“
• “Where is my phone?”
  “The cat is lying on it.”
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And in fact, in a conversation like this and especially if the da-word is at the end, drauf is way more idiomatic than darauf. darauf would sound quite formal here.
Anyway, this is a very literal example, but there are also a whole bunch of verb that just WANT to go with auf without it really being literal.
Like warten for instance. In German, it’s warten auf. In English on the other hand, it’s to wait for. English clearly got it wrong here and German’s auf makes much more logical sense.

Yeah…  I’m being ironic of course. There is no “more logical” choice with these things, just like it’s not better or worse for a branch to branch out left or right. It’s just different.
But yeah, for these verbs that just want to hang with auf as a preposition, we of course also need da-words.

• Ich warte auf Marias Nachricht.
• I’m waiting for Maria’s message.
  
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• Ich warte immer noch drauf.
• I’m still waiting for it.
  
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And again, I’d probably use drauf here, unless I want to sound passive-aggressive. Which, in fact, I should!
She said she enjoyed the date and promised she would text me. Where is it?!
“Dude, you got ghosted.”
Oh… I … okay whatever. She wasn’t even that cool.

Anyways, if you want to explore the da-words in more detail, you can check out my lesson about them. I’ll leave the link below. But this was pretty much the “normal” da-word d(a)rauf in a nutshell.

However, in some phrasings, the word drauf has kind of become a word on its own, in the sense that it’s not just the result of some grammar rules. At least, it’s not at all obvious.
And that brings us to the phrasing of today – drauf sein.

The main meaning “drauf sein”

If we use the classic da-word logic, the meaning of drauf sein would be be on it. And it is indeed used that way in daily life.

• “Der Cappuccino für… äh…  Karen-Felicitas!”
  “Hier… oh… sorry, aber den nehm’ ich nicht.”
  “Okay, und warum?”
  “Weil hier Kakaopulver drauf ist.”
• “The cappuccino for… uhm… Karen-Felicity!”
  “Here… oh… sorry, but I’m not taking this one.”
  “Okay, and why not?”
  “Because there’s cacao powder on it.”
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But there’s a second meaning to drauf sein that does NOT make sense if you think about it literally.
Here’s an example:

• “Weißt du, warum Thomas heute so gut drauf ist?”
  “Ja, er hat heute Abend ein Date.”
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I already kind of gave it away in the intro, but you probably would have guessed it from context as well. The example is about Thomas’ mood.

• “Do you know why Thomas is in such a good mood today?”
  “Yeah, he has a date this evening.”

And in combination with gut, schlecht, nicht gut or also komisch (weird),  this phrasing in super duper common in everyday spoken German.

• Ich bin heute schlecht drauf.
• I’m in a bad mood today.
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• “Weißt du, wie Maria heute drauf ist?”
  “Nicht gut!”
  “Okay, dann lass ich sie lieber in Ruhe.”
• “Do you know what mood Maria is in today?”
  “Bad, bad.”
  “All right, then I’ll better leave her alone.”
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• “Bist du jetzt ein bisschen besser drauf?”
  “Ja. Aber nur ein bisschen.”
• “Is your mood a bit better again?”
  “Yes. But just a bit.”
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• “Maria war gestern irgendwie komisch drauf.”
  “Ja, die hatte Streit mit Thomas.”
• “Maria was kind of weird/in a weird mood yesterday.”
  “Yeah, that’s because she had an argument with Thomas.”
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Oh and just to make sure… this drauf is NOT a shortened version of darauf anymore. So you cannot expand it. Using darauf in these sentence would sound SUPER weird and you might not even be understood.
Yes, I know it’s hard to imagine, but it’s true. darauf just doesn’t mean what drauf means in that context.

Now, in English, we can find a lot more qualities of mood, like gloomy or reflective or whatever. And I feel like  drauf sein is a bit less flexible with that.

• Ich bin heute nachdenklich drauf.
• I’m in a pensive mood today.

This is not wrong, but depending on the phrasing and adjective, it can sound odd, sometimes less, sometimes more.
But for the basics, like  gut drauf, super drauf, besser drauf  and of course all kinds of negatives like nicht gut drauf, schlecht drauf or kacke drauf  – all those are options that I’d say it’s worth start using because they’re just so common and authentic in daily German.

How colloquial is the phrasing? Well, it’s definitely not slang and you can find people of all age groups using it, but it’s not completely “plain”.  Maybe, I’d put them on the same tier as “I’m gonna”.
If that’s something you feel inauthentic saying (as an English native speaker), then maybe drauf sein is not a match for you, but otherwise, drauf sein won’t sound weird coming from you.

Cool. 
Now,  this was the use of drauf sein that I’d say you can start mixing in immediately, but the expression itself is actually not limited to that.

More uses of “drauf sein”

drauf sein is also used for some more general characteristics of people, like cool, locker or entspannt.

• Maria ist echt cool drauf.
• Maria is a really cool person.
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• “Kennst du den neuen Manager schon?”
  “Ja, wir haben gestern kurz gequatscht. Er ist ganz locker drauf, glaube ich.”
• “Have you met the new manager yet?”
  “Yeah, talked with him yesterday real quick. I think he’s pretty chill/easy going.”
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• “Alles gut, was Arbeit angeht sind wir beide einfach unterschiedlich drauf.”
  “Nein, nicht alles gut. Du bist hier ANGESTELLT und die Meetings gehören dazu.”
• “It’s all good, us two, we’re just wired differently when it comes to work.”
  “No, it’s not all good. You’re EMPLOYED here and the meetings are part of it.”
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And it can even be used without a qualifier as a generic way to talk about someone’s mindset.

• Wie muss man drauf sein, um seinen Hund an der Autobahn auszusetzen?
• What type of person do you have to be to abandon your dog on the highway?
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• Pizza mit Ananas und Fisch?! Wie bist du denn drauf?
• Pizza with pineapple and fish?! What’s wrong with you/What type of person are you?
  
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• Ich bin so drauf, dass ich nicht einfach mit einer Netflix-Serie aufhören kann, wenn ich einmal angefangen habe.
• Well, I’m a person/that type of person that can’t simply stop with Netflix series once I started.
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This needs a bit more Sprachgefühl (feeling for the language) to pull off in a natural way though, so either be prepared to fail or wait till you’ve heard it a few times before you give it a try. And you will hear this quite a bit.

Now, is there any logic to this phrasing? Like… is there anything that we’re actually “on”?

Well, I don’t really know if it’s where the phrasing comes from, but it does kind of fit in with the fact that German does generally use auf for settings. Like… if the phone is “on silent”, in German you’d say “auf lautlos”. So if we think of mood or character type as “mindset”, we can see a connection to “settings”.

Cool.
And it was at this moment, Emanuel just had just said “cool” and was about to wrap up the lesson, when the rainbow cat entered reality with a plop and glitter.
“What are YOU doing here?!?”  Emanuel said.
“Have you forgotten about me?!”, the cat asked.
“No! But it’s not weekend and besides… you know I don’t consume.”, Emanuel said.
“I know! You don’t need to. But this lesson… I should be in it.”, the cat said.
“What? Why should I tal… ohhh, you’re right. Thank you.”
“My pleasure”, the cat said, and poof, gone it was.
With a sigh Emanuel blew the glitter dust off his keyboard.

“drauf” and “auf Drogen”  for drugs

So… there’s one more use for drauf sein that I should mention here and that’s the sense of being on drugs.
And here, German and English actually use the same idea, so they both say “being on something”.

• Thomas hat auf LSD die ganze Nacht die Küche geputzt.
• Thomas cleaned the kitchen all night on LSD.
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Quick side note – in German, the expression absolutely does NOT include alcohol; not sure how it’s in English. And I feel like it also sounds weird for weed. You can sometimes find someone say “auf Bier sein”, but that’s more like a play on terms then.

Anyway, the main difference is that in German, you can use the generic unclarified drauf sein for the idea of being high on something.

• Thomas ist total drauf.
• Thomas is super high/tripping balls.
  
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• Maria ist heute morgen drauf nach Hause gekommen.
• Maria came home this morning, high as a kite.
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And people even get creative with it sometimes use it as an adjective or create new words.

• Auf der Party waren mir zu viele draufe Leute.
• At the party, there were too many people on drugs for me.
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• Auf der Party waren mir zu viele Druffis.
• There were too many druggies at the party for my taste.
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This is super premium+ pro max colloquial though, so please don’t use it unless you’re somewhat fluent already. You know… using the cooler, more slang type things … that’s something that needs to be earned. Coming from an A1 student, it just sounds like a wannabe.

And I think that’s where we’ll wrap it up for today.
Yeaay!!
This was our look at the meanings and uses of the phrase drauf sein.

As always, if you want to check how much you remember, just take the little quiz I have prepared for you.
And of course if you have any questions or suggestions just leave me a comment.

I hope you liked it and see you next time.