“Stomach this!“

Hello everyone,

day 10 of our Advent Calendar and today we’ll look at someone who gets a lot of hard, greasy work just to do over Christmas – I am talking about

der Magen

Which is the German word for stomach.
Magen – stomach. Just by the sound and looks of them we could assume that they’re somehow related. But they’re not.
Stomach comes from the very very ancient Indo-European root  *stom-en. This root originally referred to all kinds of openings, but in Ancient Greek (which is of course way less ancient than Indo-European) the word stoma referred to mainly the mouth. And that might well also be the origin of the German word Stimme (voice). Makes sense, I think – the stomach is what comes “after” the mouth opening, the Stimme is what comes out.

The origin of Magen on the other hand is the impressively ancient Indo-European root *mak- which was used for a sack from skin or leather. And there is a relative in English: maw. Maw got pushed out by stomach for the most part, and is now only ever used in a few specific contexts.
German on the other hand stuck with der Magen.
But as you can see in these examples, the expressions and idioms are the same in both languages

• Die Augen sind oft größer als der Magen.
• The eyes are bigger than your stomach.
  

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• Liebe geht durch den Magen.
• The way to a (wo)man’s heart is through their stomach.
  

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• Der Stress schlägt mir auf den Magen.
• The stress upsets my  stomach.
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• Bei dem Gedanken an Rum dreht sich mir der Magen um.
• The thought of rum makes my stomach turn.
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So make sure to try adding one or two of those to your active vocabulary.
And if you’re in Germany, you should also try is a Magenbitter – that’s a special kind of herb spirit (around 40%) that’ll go right up to your bile and be like:

“Look at me. I’m the bitter around here now!”

It’s perfect after a hefty Christmas meal for example. But make sure you don’t stress your stomach too much, so you don’t get Magenbeschwerden (tummy ache, gastric distress) or even a Magengeschwür (stomach ulcer).

And that’s it for today :)
I’m gonna go eat something now, you all have a great day and I’ll see you tomorrow!