From The Local 29 July 2022
SWEDISH WORD OF THE DAY
Swedish word of the day: lathund
This Swedish word is a lazy dog that will help you do something.
Lathund, which literally means ‘lazy dog’, is listed on the website of the Swedish Academy – an independent institution responsible for regulating and promoting the Swedish language – as having two meanings. The first is ‘a lazy person’, and the second is a mnemonic device or easy guide for doing something.
The first use is rather unusual, and perhaps verging on archaic. The second, however, is widely used, and is perhaps yet another sign of Swedish pragmatism.
So, what does a lazy dog have to do with mnemonic devices or how-to guides? Perhaps the meaning can be found in the history of the word.
The original meaning of lathund was ‘a lazy person’, attested as far back as 1623. There was even a feminine version of the word: lathynda.
Lathynda today has a more offensive ring to it which it most likely lacked in the 1600s, since hynda today carries the same meanings as its English homologue, bitch, although it might even be harsher still in Swedish.
Good advice is to stay clear of hynda altogether, except perhaps if you work in a kennel and are referring to a female dog, and even then most people would probably use hona, which is used to mean ‘female of a certain animal’. But enough of that.
The second meaning, as a tool or how-to guide to explain how to do something, appeared in the mid-1800s, which could also provide some information on why an insult used to accuse someone of being lazy took on this new meaning.
An example of a lathund in this context could be a piece of paper with clear lines for putting under unlined paper when writing to aid with neat handwriting, a counting table for calculations, or a tool for helping with translations at school.
If one is slightly familiar with the disciplinarian approaches to pedagogy that preceded the 20th century’s realisation that hitting kids doesn’t make them learn better, it will come as no surprise that some people in the 1800s could initially have considered these new learning aids tools for the lazy.
Today the word has a more positive ring to it, and is well-established as an easy guide for doing a certain thing. Lots of workplaces have several lathundar (the plural of lathund) for doing different things that might require a bit of instruction – similar to a “roadmap” in English. It is an easy way to train new workers in the basics of a particular task. One example is the procedure for turning on the alarm system when you are the last person to leave.
Are you good at explaining how something works? Are you good at doing a certain thing at school or at work? Why not make a lathund for it? Post it on Instagram or Twitter and tag us @thelocalsweden.
Example sentences:
Har ni en lathund för hur man gör det där?
Do you have an easy guide for how to do that?
Lena, kan du visa hur man larmar på? Kolla lathunden, den ligger vid entrén.
Lena, can you show me how to activate the alarm? Check the easy guide by the entrance.