One of the phrases from today’s Phrasen des Tages was um es ganz offen zu sagen – “to put it bluntly.” On double checking this meaning on dict.cc, I discovered that there is another quite similar phrase Um ganz offen zu sein… – “To be perfectly candid…” And to be perfectly candid, these phrases struck me funny, as much of the time it feels as though one cannot avoid being rather blunt when speaking German. For example, if you want to say something “smells,” you can use the word riechen. Now, this just happens to sound quite a bit like a much stronger word in English “reeks” and indeed dict.cc offers “reek” as one of the possible meanings of riechen.
riechen
to smell 1241
to scent 204
to reek 90
to nose 8
Then there is weinen “to weep” which happens to sound quite a bit like “to whine” in English, although this doesn’t happen to be one of its possible meanings at least as far as I can tell.
weinen
to weep 626
to cry 364
to bawl 21
The word stark is another example.
stark
strong 1186
vigorous 365
severe 295
powerful 208
With it being a cognate for the English word “stark” it brings along with it some of those strong associations (pun fully intended).
German, like the Devil said to the Hunter who offered him a puff from his gun after calling it a pipe, it’s starker Tobak – “strong stuff!”
Earthquake Words/Erdbeben Wörter 