/das ɪst miːɐ̯ vʊʁst/ lit. ‘that’s sausage to me’
German idiom, colloquial. To not care about something at all.
Draft Not yet checked by a native German speaker.
How do people use Das ist mir Wurst
?
Colloquial and very common, a verbal shrug for when a choice really doesn’t matter to you, though it can sound dismissive if the other person cares. The person who doesn’t care goes in the dative, so you get “mir ist das wurst”, “ihm ist das wurst” and “es ist mir wurst, wer gewinnt”. Outside northern Germany people often say and write “wurscht”, which is how the word sounds there.
Also said das ist mir wurscht, mir ist das wurst
Das ist mir Wurst
in real sentences
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Es ist mir wurst, wer gewinnt.
I don’t care who wins.
Tatoeba, sentence by brauchinet, translation by CK, CC BY 2.0 FR
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Es ist mir wurst, wie viel Geld du hast.
I couldn’t care less how much money you have.
Tatoeba, sentence by brauchinet, translation by sundown, CC BY 2.0 FR
Where does Das ist mir Wurst
come from?
DWDS, quoting Wolfgang Pfeifer’s etymological dictionary, dates “das ist mir Wurst” to the early 19th century and traces it to German student slang. Pfeifer’s explanation is that a sausage has two identical ends, so it makes no difference which one you start from. The Redensarten-Index offers a second theory: sausage was cheap, everyday food stuffed with whatever was at hand, so what goes into it doesn’t matter either. English Wiktionary notes that Duden derives the adjective from the noun but calls the connection unclear.
Mistakes learners make with Das ist mir Wurst
Treating it as the noun with an article. “Das ist mir eine Wurst” sounds like someone handed you a sausage; in the idiom wurst works like the adjective egal, which is why current dictionaries (Duden, German Wiktionary) spell it with a small w.
Other German idioms like Das ist mir Wurst
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?
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