Word of the Day – “schief”

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Hello everyone,

and welcome to your German Word of the Day, this time with a look at

The Meaning of “schief”

When you look it up online, you’ll get a whole bunch of translation options. Dict.cc actually lists like 20 or so.

But it’s a great example for this concept of a “meaning cloud” and how it can be useful for learning vocabulary.
Let me explain …

Meaning Cloud – How to think about Words and Translations

You see, words in different languages rarely map onto each other precisely.
Concrete nouns tend to do it. The word fork and the word Gabel do more or less represent the exact same “concept”.
But the majority of words does not match that well, because a “word” in a language is kind of a crazy shaped cloud that covers some idea areas while not covering others that are adjacent.

And the same goes for the translation of that word in another language. That is also a cloud, but with a different shape. The two clouds intersect, so they partially cover the same idea area. THAT’S why they are translations, but they’re ONLY translations within the area where they intersect.
And the parts that don’t intersect… well… they’re NOT translations for each other there.

If you’re now like “Huh?” no worries, because schief is the perfect word to give an example with.
And I’ve also written an article about this concept of meaning cloud with some actual visuals. I’ll leave the link below, so you can explore it further if you want to.

But let’s get to the example – one of the many translations for schief is crooked.
And an idea area that they share is for example a picture that’s a bit crooked on the wall.

• Das Bild hängt schief.
• The picture is (“hangs”) crooked.
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• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

In this sense, the meaning clouds overlap.

But crooked is also used to describe a type of character or behavior and for that schief is NOT the right word (in fact, there is no good direct translation).
So there, the meaning clouds of crooked and schief do NOT overlap.
And it’s the same for schiefe Ebene, which translates to inclined plane, not crooked plane.

Now, we could just say that these are different usages of the words and learn them all separately, but that’s not really the most efficient way.

It’s often much better to try and find the “core” of a meaning cloud. What idea is in the center of it that all the various uses are kind of variants of. Because once we manage to grasp a word in this way, once we see its “soul”, all or at least most of translations a dictionary offers you start to make sense and we kind of can tell when they fit and when they don’t.

Take crooked for instance.
It comes from an old Germanic word for a hook, and the core is the idea of something like bent out of shape.
A crooked picture on the wall is “bent” out of alignment, same for crooked teeth and also for a crooked institution.

And that’s different from the essence of schief.

The Core Meaning of “schief”

Schief also has a notion of “out of alignment” but the true core of it is simply “at an angle” compared to the horizontal line (or the vertical).

A tilted image is actually the perfect visual for schief because it’s purely about not being horizontally aligned AND it does have a negative touch… like it’s something you’d want to correct and make “straight” (gerade).

• “Ist das Bild gerade?”
  “Nein, es ist ein bisschen schief.”
• “Is the image straight?”
  “No, it’s a little tilted/crooked.”
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• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

• Mein Becken ist schief.
• My pelvis has a tilt.
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• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

• Oh Gott, wie hast du denn geparkt?! Total schief.
• Oh God, how did you park?! It’s super crooked.
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• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

• Das Foto ist der schiefe Turm von Pisa.
• The picture is the leaning tower of Pisa.
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• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

This slightly negative touch is also a good way to differentiate between schief and schräg, which is also about “not being at a 90 degree angle” but it’s a bit more “on purpose“.
Like… if the roof of a house is schräg, that’s an architectural choice (sloped roof), whereas if it is schief, that sounds more like a construction error of some kind.

And this notion of error is also present in many of the related words and phrases and there are actually some really cool and common ones.

Words and Phrases with “schief”

First up, we have the verb schiefgehen. Taken literally, it’d be something like “to go out of a horizontal angle” but the actual meaning is pretty much to go wrong in a sense of not working out or going awry.

• Ich meine… was kann schon schiefgehen?
• I mean… What could go wrong, right?
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• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

• Das Experiment ist schiefgegangen.
• The experiment went wrong.
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• Der Trainer muss der Presse erklären, was im Halbfinale schiefgelaufen ist.
• The trainer has to explain to the press what went wrong in the semi finals.
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• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

It’s not used for small scale stuff not working, like trying to make the recipe from the cookbook or trying to catch a train. You’d use nicht klappen or nicht schaffen for that.

But you’ll definitely see schiefgehen and schieflaufen in daily life and they’re good addition to your active vocabulary if you’re B1 level or higher.

Cool.

Next up, we have the expression die schiefe Bahn. Literally, it means the tilted track, and the real meaning is pretty much off the straight and narrow in a sense of toward illegal activity.

• Über falsche Freunde ist er auf die schiefe Bahn gekommen.
• Through bad friends he ended up breaking bad.
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• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

This is not one you need to use actively probably, but you’ll definitely hear it sooner or later.

Sweet!
The next expression I want to share is jemanden schief angucken.
And I’ll actually start with an example that might give enough contextual clues :)

• Immer wenn ich im Einkaufszentrum mit meinem pinken Einhorn rede, werde ich schief angeguckt.
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• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

Do you have an idea what it could mean?
It’s about giving or getting “weird looks”. Like… when you see someone act weird, you’ll look at them with this skeptical look, and a tilted head.

• Whenever I talk to my pink unicorn at the mall, I’m getting weird looks.

Again, definitely a phrase you’ll hear in daily life and if you manage to use it yourself at the right time, you’ll have one of these “native” moments where people forget you’re not a native speaker for a second.

And the same also goes for our last verb schiefliegen. Literally, it’s lying at an angle and it can be used in this sense, but it also has the figurative sense of being wrong.
You think it’s A, but it’s actually B… that’s a classic case of you schiefliegen.

• Der “Experte” lag mit seiner Prognose komplett schief.
• The “expert” was completely off the mark/wrong with his prediction.
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• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

Oh… when you use it, make sure that you pronounce it schief-liegen and not schie-fliegen.
Because that would sound like you’re talking about ski flying, the sport.

All right.
Now, of course there are also some compound nouns with schief, like finanzielle Schieflage (financially difficult situation) or the beautiful der Beckenschiefstand (pelvic tilt).

But they’re not as useful and you’ll be able to guess most of them from context.

So I’d say… let’s wrap it up here :)

This was our look at the meaning of schief and its little family. It has dozens of potential translations, but all you really need to think of a tilted image. Not horizontal and something you feel should be fixed.

Now, usually we do a recap quiz here together, but this time, there isn’t really that much to ask aside from the meanings of the various phrases we went over.

And I think the better way to practice this is by using my awesome text comprehension tool.
Create a short text on your level that uses the words we talked about today and see if you can understand it and answer a few “exam”-style questions.

And of course, if you have any questions about any of the words e talked about today, just leave me a comment.

I hope you enjoyed it, have a great week, and I’ll see you next time

Further Reading:

• Meaning Cloud – How to think of Vocabulary

Text Comprehension Practice with “schief”

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