MAWNGENOWN.

July 23, 2007 at 8:29 PM · Uncategorized

MAWNGENOWN. I have no idea what the spelling of this word is in Danish. The spelling in the caption is how it sounded when my mother said it. Words enter languages because they are useful (see the other post for today). My mother defined “mawngenown” as “morning grumpiness in men.” We pressed her on whether it could ever be applied to women. She was firm that it could not be used to apply to women. Because the men in the household were too sleepy in the morning to muster grumpiness, we learned the word fairly late in life.

4 comments

Molly July 24, 2007 at 7:57 PM

Interestingly, my Danish friend, Sussi, had never heard of Mawngnown. I was very disappointed, since it’s one of the few (purportedly) Danish words I know.

Annalisa July 25, 2007 at 2:10 PM

I love the idea of being too sleepy to muster grumpiness. For me, the two often go hand in hand. I should invent a word for my sleepy grumpiness.

Simon Gray August 7, 2007 at 12:42 PM

Morgengnaven = morning grumpy (gnaven means grumpy)

It’s pronounced morn-gnaywn.

It’s not a word we normally use though. Usually if someone is grumpy or gets annoyed easily after he or she has just woken up, you call them morgensur which literally means “morning sour” and is pronounced morn-soor. Sur is a word which is used interchangeably for angry, mad, grumpy, and most other negative moods one can be in.

Just out of interest what is your relation to Denmark and why are you coming up with these Danish words? What’s the story? Myself, I just happened to stumble upon this blog using blogsearch.google.com.

Nick August 12, 2007 at 3:29 PM

It wasn’t answered here, but the short answer (speaking as the blogger’s son) is that the blogger’s mother was a native born Dane. Hence why one of my middle names is Pallesen