Hello everyone,
And welcome to your German Word of the Day.
Although, the title doesn’t really fit. The better title would be “Vocabulary Roundup”. Usually, we look at a German word and its family and explore that, but it can also be quite helpful to take an English word or a “theme” and explore the different ways to express it in German.
That’s what we’ll do today, and the field we’ll explore is what you need to talk about your experience with German learning:
Hurting and Pain in German
Nah, I’m kidding of course. I hope your German learning experience isn’t that bad.
But yeah, hurting and pain is a useful area of language to know, and besides some must-have vocabulary, there are also some really cool surprise family reveals waiting for us.
So if you’re ready, let’s jump right in.
***
And we’ll start with the most important bit, which are the three ways to translate to hurt in German. Because German, also know as the Distinguisher, distinguishes between the following three types:
- hurting as injuring
- hurting as giving pain
- hurting as damaging
And you know what it means when German distinguishes between things … different word for each of them.
Hooray!
The translation for the first type of hurting, the one that’s about causing injury, is verletzen.
The Use of “verletzen”
It belongs to the family of last and late, and a possible way to think about it is as “making late”. This is not too far from a sense of obstructing and an injury is definitely a very effective form of obstruction. This is just kind of a mnemonic though. If you don’t vibe with it, don’t worry. You can just take verletzen as a random word and ignore the connections.
Anyways, time for examples.
- Thomas hat sich beim Salatwaschen verletzt.
- Thomas hurt himself while washing salad.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Zum Glück ist es nur eine leichte Verletzung.
- Luckily, it’s only a minor injury.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Wie durch ein Wunder gab es bei dem Unfall keine Verletzten.
- Miraculously, there was no one injured by the accident.
(lit.: “there were no injured ones”) - Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
So, whenever you can replace hurting with injuring, verletzen is the word you need. But that’s not all of it.
Because in German, verletzen also works for emotionally hurting.
- Dieses Gehaltsangebot verletzt meine Gefühle.
- This salary offer hurts my feelings.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- “Was?! Du hast beim Wandern ein Einhorn getroffen?! Hat es dich angegriffen??”
“Nicht körperlich, aber es hat verletzende Kommentare über meine Frisur gemacht.” - “What?! You met a unicorn while hiking?! Did it attack you??”
“Not physically, but it made hurtful comments about my hair.”
(lit.: “hurting comments”) - Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
So in German, you can kind of “injure” someone in an emotional way, too.
But for such contexts verletzen pretty much overlaps with the second type of hurting – the one that is focused on giving pain. Which brings us to our next phrasing.
The Use of “weh tun”
The German way to say that something is giving pain wehtun. Or weh tun, which is also an accepted spelling.
You can actually think of this verb as “doing (causing) woe”, if you need a mnemonic.
Both words, weh and woe, most likely come from an exclamation of “lamenting”. Like… just think “whooow”, but with pain.
And there are a couple of surprise relatives to be found here. The first one is weinen, which means to cry. But the real surprise is the second one.
Drumroll…
wenig.
That’s right, the German word for “not much” is a direct relative of “woe”. Like… if you didn’t have much sleep, in German, you kind of say “I had woe-y sleep.” Which kind of makes sense, if you think about it.
But anyway, so wehtun is the German word for hurting and the focus is on pain.
- Tut es sehr weh, die Achseln zu wachsen?
- Does it hurt a lot to wax the arm pits?/
Is waxing the arm pits very painful? - Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Wenn ich hier drücke, tut das weh?
- If I press here, does that hurt?
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Aua, das hat wehgetan.
- Outch, that hurt.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
And wehtun it’s one of those verbs where German really likes to add that Dative object as the “receiver” of the pain.
Here’s what I mean:
- Sind wir bald da? Meine Beine tun weh.
- Are we about to be there soon? My legs hurt.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
This is totally okay, idiomatic and understandable. But a lot of times, Germans will add in a mir.
- … Meine Beine tun mir weh.
The translation and meaning is the exact same, but this sounds a little more “personal”.
And it’s especially common, if the context is emotional pain.
- Was das Einhorn gesagt hat, hat mir sehr weh getan.
- What the unicorn said, was very painful for me.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
And at this point many of you are thinking back to verletzen in the context of “emotional damage” and are wondering when to use it or wehtun and what the difference is.
And the answer is… it doesn’t really matter that much.
- Die Worte haben mir sehr weh getan.
- Die Worte haben mich sehr verletzt.
If we overanalyze, the first sentence is more focused on the pain, the second more on the “damage”, but in essence the two sentences express the same thing… that the words hurt me.
What’s important to note is that for wehtun there is no direct noun or adjective. So if that’s what you need, you’d go with something based on verletzen or the German word for pain.
But before we get to that, let’s quickly look at the third type of hurting – the hurting as in damaging. That’s what you need when you talk about hurting an object or concept. Like hurting the chances or hurting the bottom line. And the exact translation depends on the context, but generally schaden (which is the main word for damage) is a pretty good choice.
- Ab und zu ein Stück Kuchen schadet nicht.
- A piece of cake every now and then doesn’t hurt.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Kein Foto mit Hund zu haben schadet den Chancen auf ein Tinder-Match immens.
- Not having a picture with a dog significantly hurts the chances of a Tinder match immensely.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Der Skandal hat dem Unternehmen geschadet.
- The scandal hurt the company.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
I’ve talked more about schaden and its family in the article on schade, so I’ll leave a link to that below.
Now, there are probably a few niche uses of to hurt that I didn’t mention, but let’s leave those for the comments and move on to the other important word: the German word for pain.
“pain” in German
And the main German word for pain is of course das Keiber.
The origin of this word is actually the phrase “kein Bier”, but over centuries of usage, it got shortened.
Okay, I’m kidding of course. “Keiber” is not a thing.
Just wanted to check if you’re still paying attention :).
So, the real word for pain in German is der Schmerz.
And here we have our final big family surprise because der Schmerz is related to… smart.
Now you’re like “Yeah right. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.” but unlike the “kein Bier” thing, this one is actually true.
The origin is a Germanic word which was about biting, stinging pain and the meaning of smart follows the same “logic” as calling someone “sharp” when we want to say they’re intelligent.
German Schmerz has remained with the original idea though and is the word for pain.
Though in practice, the default mode of using it is in the plural: die Schmerzen.
- Haben Sie Schmerzen?
- Do you have pain?
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Die Schmerzen sind viel besser geworden.
- The pain has improved a lot/got a lot better.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Both these examples would sound SUPER bad with just Schmerz.
And also the various types of pain or ache usually go with the plural.
- “Ich habe Kopfschmerzen und Bauchschmerzen.”
“Oh, hast du Rings of Power geguckt?”
“Ja.” - “I have a headache and tummy ache.”
“Oh, did you watch Rings of Power?”
“Yes.” - Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Notable exceptions are emotional pains like der Trennungsschmerz (pain of separation) or der Herzschmerz which is the emotional heartache. While the plural version Herzschmerzen is actual pain in the heart.
And you also have the singular in the words for “pain medicine“, like Schmerzmittel (generic term for pain killers), schmerzlindernd (pain relieving, analgetic) or Kopfschmerztablette (headache pill).
- “Aua, mein Kopf tut weh von den ganzen langen Wörtern in Deutsch.”
“Dann nimm eine Kopfschmerztablette.”
“AUA.” - “Ouch, my head hurts from all those long words in German.”
“Take a Kopfschmerztablette then.”
“Ouch!!” - Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Besides the noun, there’s also the verb schmerzen, which is a possible translation for to hurt in the sense of pain, but it does sound a bit high brow in most contexts and wehtun is definitely the better option.
- Die Niederlage schmerzt sehr.
- The loss (of the game) hurts/is very painful.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
And then, there are a bunch of useful adjectives, but I think you can get all of them pretty much from context.
- Das Meeting war kurz und schmerzlos.
- The meeting was quick and painless.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Die Zahn-OP war sehr schmerzhaft.
- The tooth surgery was very painful.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Ich habe dich gestern beim Meeting schmerzlich vermisst.
- I sorely missed you at the meeting yesterday.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Oh and let’s also mention das Schmerzensgeld, which is money you get paid as compensation by someone who hurt you.
And at least according to dict.cc can be translated as pain and suffering money but also as smart-money, so there we can directly see the connection of Schmerz and smart.
Not sure if smart money is really used in that context though, considering how common it is in finance. Let me know in the comments if you know.
And speaking of leaving a comment… this is pretty much the time to do it, because I think we’ll wrap it up here!
So if you have any questions or suggestions about any of this, let me know.
“Yeah, I have a question… where is the quiz where I can test myself on this stuff?”
Well… that’s going to be part of the Advent Calendar, which will start in a few days, so stay tuned :)
For now, I’m out. I hope you enjoyed this and learned a thing or two. Have a great week and I’ll see you in the next one.
Bis dann :)
further reading:
Sorry, coming to this article late and there are already 51 comments so maybe someone has pointed this out, but the audio for “Die Niederlage schmerzt sehr” is wrong, and it’s not because it’s not in Züritüüsch! The audio is actually for “Das Meeting war kurz und schmerzlos.” You have the same audio file linked twice. Das schmerzt!
In this sentence “Der Skandal hat dem Unternehmen geschadet”,
could “Unternehmen” be replaced with “Firma”? Are there guidelines regarding when to use Firma versus Unternehmen?
The overlap between the two is large. I think “Unternehmen” is more common for really big firms, and Firma has a certain untertone of producing something. So a restaurant would be an “Unternehmen”, but not really a “Firma”, but that also might just be my personal perception.
Danke schön to everyone who paid extra money for your subscriptions so that I can have a chance to read the excellent articles here for free. I am also very grateful to Emanuel for the timely reply to my email. I will do my best to learn effectively so that your offer won’t be wasted.
I want to give a huge thanks to everyone that is dipping a bit more on this site for giving me the opportunity to get sponsored and study alongside all of you. You are amazing, thank you from the bottom of my heart!
Willkommen!
Hi Emanuel and everyone who helped out, I just wanted to send a huge thank you to all of you for your generosity! It really means a lot to me that those who paid extra helped make this membership possible. Your support has made a big difference, and I’m incredibly grateful to be a part of this amazing community. I’m excited to start learning and will definitely make the most of it!
Willkommen Maz!
off topic, I sometimes like to check my progress in “my profile” page and there Vocabulary and Grammar list a bunch of articles that I read and count them showing me the percentage of articles I finished reading for that section. However when it comes to Advent Calendar articles, it lists a lot of them below, but does not take them into account for some reason. I wonder why. Is that a bug?
That’s a bug, yeah. I’ll look into it!
Fixed!
I also modified the list a bit, so that one can open and close it.
It kind of makes a difference if you have a lot of articles marked as “read” already, because you don’t need to scroll as much.
Thank you! Now it looks neat and tidy!
Hello! I just wanted to say thank you to the kind folks who made this sponsorship possible and that I really appreciate this opportunity ;) Vielen lieben Dank!!
How would you say:
dull pain
sharp pain
throbbing pain
aching pain
BTW The word “ache” is not necessarily a direct swap for “pain” in English. It suggests a pain that is strong, unrelenting and perhaps diffuse. Eg a sprained ankle or after a hit on the head. We’d say “Boy, my head aches.” However I think German doesn’t easily distinguish this sense, just using schmerzen. When at an Austrian hospital recently I struggled a little to get this specific sense across.
dull pain – dumpfer/stumpfer Schmerz
sharp pain – stechender Schmerz (stinging)
throbbing – pochender Schmerz
aching pain – no idea what that is. Please describe.
There’s also “ziehender Schmerz” “drückender Schmerz” and some others.
And yeah, I don’t have a concept in my mind to distinguish between “pain” and “ache”.
There’s really probably no technical difference between “ache” and “pain” – “aches and pains” is actually a bit of a fixed phrase to describe what Schmerzmittel work against. Kopfschmerzen will generally be a “headache,” as will most -schmerzen associated with a body part or area (stomach, tooth, ear…).
I do agree with Micky, though, that “ache” tends to sound slightly more specific, but I don’t know exactly how to articulate it. I think “diffuse” is probably helpful – you wouldn’t call a sharp or stabbing pain in a particular spot an “ache,” I don’t think. To me, it’s also something more likely to be an aftereffect of an injury or the effect of an illness. Your ankle hurts really badly when you sprain it; it aches for weeks afterward while you recover. I’m not sure about “strong/unrelenting” – you can definitely talk about a “dull ache.”
I’d probably say it’s most useful to think of “aching” as what it feels like to get older. Muskelkater would usually be “soreness” (at least in AE), but “muscle aches”/”aching muscles” would fit just as well, and as you get past your physical prime, you just have more aches pretty much all the time.
Pretty much agree with all your thoughts. Bottom line is there doesn’t seem to be a way to clearly distinguish the nuances for ache and pain in German. It’s like pipe and tube for German Rohr. Or Wand and Mauer for English wall.
BTW Pain is usually used only as a noun. Hurt is usually used only as a verb. Ache can be either. Although one could say “it pains me to tell you that…” or, much less likely, “You have caused me great hurt and suffering.” Schmerzen covers all bases.
Ache is generally less severe than pain, though a severe ache could, I suppose, overlap a mild pain.
And in the above examples, it is the singular “Schmerz”?
Hast du dumpfer Schmerz (or Schmerzen?)?
And really, sometimes I have to laugh out loud at some of your comments, much to the distress of those around me at the coffee shop.
If you want to use it in singular, you need an article most of the time.
You wouldn’t typically do it in a question but something like this could work.
– Der Schmerz kommt immer, wenn ich mich buecke.
Oh and I think Schmerz has the figurative side on lock.
– Ich habe Herzschmerz (emotional, call your friend)
– Ich habe Herzschmerzen (physical, call emergency doc)
Danke
The people who actually allowed me to get this sponsorship (Gucci could try me and i would stand my ground) are fr champions. Thanks Emanuel as well, i’ll go to Berlin just to shake your hand
Thank you so much to everyone who contributed to making this learning platform possible! Your support has made a huge difference in my German learning journey, and I’m so grateful for this opportunity. This article was super helpful!
In the sentence “Ab und zu ein Stück Kuchen schadet nicht”, does the phrase “ab und zu” not require the verb to follow it, as in “ab und zu schadet… ” or does the phrase act more like “und” and “aber” or is there some secret German emphasis word inversion thing going on?
“ab und zu ein Stück Kuchen” is one phrase here. You can see that better when you do the question test.
The “ab und zu” does not really answer to “When doesn’t a piece of cake hurt?”.
The phrase “ab und zu ein Stück Kuchen” answers the question “What doesn’t hurt?”
You can reshuffle it to “Ein Stück Kuchen ab und zu” but you cannot really split it up without changing the meaning of the sentence.
– Ein Stück Kuchen schadet ab und zu nicht.
This kind of means that every now and then, there’s an occurrance of a piece of cake not hurting (while most of the time, it does).
You can also think of it as a condensed down sentence “[Ab und zu ein Stück Kuchen zu essen] schadet nicht.”
Does that help?
In English we still say “that smarts” for a burning/stinging pain! It might be a little dated, but still widely understood.
The plant looks like mistletoe maybe we need a christmas episode :D
It’s supposed to be a stinging nettle :).
I’ll do an Advent Calendar in December by the way. One post every day.
:D
I like the idea of taking an English word or idea and covering how to present it auf Deutsch.
Yeah, for a long time I was reluctant to doing this because not only English native speakers read my stuff, but I realized that even foreigners who are not English natives often apply “English logic” when translating, instead of coming from the mother tongue, so I think it’s helpful for everyone after all.
I’ve always loved the words “fernweh” & “heimweh” . One word encapsulates a full emotional experience.
Wow, I’m surprised by myself that I didn’t mention them even in passing :).
Thanks for adding them here!!
In the sentence “Es gab bei dem Unfall keine Verletzen”, shouldn’t it rather be “Es gab bei dem Unfall keine Verletzten” in order to mean “no injured ones”? Alternatively, if the phrase is indeed “keine Verletzen”, does the -e of “eine” imply that “Verletzen” is the plural form of the Gerund?
You’re completely right, it must be “Verletzten”. That’s a common German typo when typing fast to miss one a second t.
From halbri:
Emanuel, the following quote is from one of today’s words for pain “schmerz.”
“So, the real word for pain in German is der Schmerz.
And here we have our final big family suprise because der Schmerz is related to… smart.”
Similarly, in English “smart” also refers to pain, both physical and emotional.
From Dictionary.com:
SMART: to be a source of sharp, local, and usually superficial pain, as a wound.
Synonyms: sting, hurt, pain
To be the cause of a sharp, stinging pain, as an irritating application, a blow, etc.
to feel a sharp, stinging pain, as in a wound.
To suffer keenly from wounded feelings:
She smarted under their criticism.
To feel shame or remorse or to suffer in punishment or in return for something.
I was about to comment this same thing. It’s a bit old-fashioned sounding in English (in the US anyway) but its absolutely another connection between “smart” and “hurt/pain”!
I’ve always appreciated that “contractions” (in the process of childbirth) are Wehen (sing. die Wehe) in German. Seems a little more true to life:
Groovy article: it’s nice to be able to demarcate the “pain space” a bit better. “wehtun/weh tun” always confused me a little (separable? separ*ated*? Huh…?) But looking back at the examples they’re all pretty straightforward now, and I think it was just the presence or absence of the connecting space that had me believing that some underlying magic was taking place.
The connection between “smart” and “Schmerz” is also pretty cool, even if I must confess to getting lost as far as which word(s) in which language(s) is supposed to be being related within the article :-/ I’m sure you’ve mixed in –or tripped over– the fact that “smart(s)” in English can also mean “sharp pain”: so, zB “My backside was still smarting from the extending spanking”, or “Applying that antiseptic to the cut on my hand really smarts”. (It also works for mental pain: “Not even getting an interview for that crappy job really smarts…”)
[[Edit: whoops, looks like “dmichelsonmann” just mentioned this.]]
I also have no notion of what “smart money” is doing as a translation of “Schmerzensgeld”: it doesn’t ring true for me at all. Maybe someone else can see the connection? (“(the) smart money” usually describes a bet or an investment that’s well justified in some manner)
A few typos…
==================
word and it’s family => word and it**s family
must have vocabulary => must*-*have vocabulary
for hurting is the focus => for hurting i*f* the focus
Outch, that hurt. => Ou**ch, that hurt. (There are a few occurrences of this)
Mein Beine tun mir weh. => Meine Bein*e* tun mir weh. (I think I see/hear this one quite often as “Mir tun die Beine weh” or “Die Beine tun mir weh”. Does that also sound natural, or am I perhaps conflating it with expressions such as “Der Verteidiger hat sich das Bein gebrochen”? I guess what I’m asking is whether the “double possessive” — mir + meine for example– sounds better, worse, or pretty much the same as the “single possessive” mir+die )
about hurting and object or concept. => about hurting an** object or concept.
our final big family suprise => our final big family su*r*prise
The tooth surgery was very pain full. => The tooth surgery was very pain**ful**.
Hallo,
Let’s get some typos out of the way!
Disclaimer to our friends here on the blog: I’m not doing these corrections with intent to verletzt, it’s a kind of “arrangement” Emanuel and I have whereby I proofread and “catch” as many typos as I can – I’m obviously not infallible and miss a few and even make my own typos – as one does!)
German word and it’s family (German word and its family)
is the German word for hurting is the focus is on pain (is the German word for hurting and the focus is on pain)
pain full (painful)
Now that’s done, I have a question: what would the German translation for something being a pain in the neck/arse be?
Great article once again and bis bald :)
Oh, German has a big fat gap in its vocabulary.
I’d say “etwas ist SUPER nervig” or “ätzend” or something like that. We don’t have as nice an expression as English here :)