Advertisement

Norwegian word of the day: Agurktid

The Local (news@thelocal.com)
The Local ([email protected])
Norwegian word of the day: Agurktid
Caption photo by Francesco Ungaro on Unsplash / Nicolas Raymond/FlickR

It's that time of year in Norway where you'll start seeing absurd and banal stories in the news.

Advertisement

Why do I need to know this expression?

Agurktid essentially means silly season in Norwegian. Tid is the word for time and agurk is the Norwegian word for cucumber.

In English, it is often referred to as “silly season” because the summer was when journalists would traditionally take their holiday, leaving editors sceptical of giving any serious reporting pieces to the summer stand-ins.

It's not just journalists who are off in the summer, its also politicians and experts on current affairs. Essentially this means there are very few people to create headlines and about as few to write them.  

The word can be traced back to the German word Sauregurkenzeit, which directly translated means “sour cucumber time”. In German, this term was eventually used to describe a slow news day.

Silly season gives way to plenty of agurknyheterDirectly translated, agurknyheter means “cucumber news". agurknyheter is typically used to describe news that is unimportant and frequently about ridiculous events. 

Advertisement

Though cucumber news originally was more popular in the summertime, you can find it used year-round nowadays. 

Popular agurknyheter themes

- Objects that are similar to things they are not

- Norwegians acting embarrassingly during vacation

- Odd summer jobs descriptions

-The weather breaking some type of record

Use it like this 

Det nærmer seg sommerferie, og det betyr at det også snart er høysesong for agurknyheter“It’s getting close to the summer holidays, and that means it’s also high time for cucumber news."

More

Join the conversation in our comments section below. Share your own views and experience and if you have a question or suggestion for our journalists then email us at [email protected].
Please keep comments civil, constructive and on topic – and make sure to read our terms of use before getting involved.

Please log in to leave a comment.

See Also