/ɛs ɪst ˈzaʊ̯ˌkalt/ lit. ‘it’s sow-cold’
German idiom, colloquial. It is bitterly cold.
Draft Not yet checked by a native German speaker.
How do people use Es ist saukalt
?
Colloquial and a bit rough: fine among friends, out of place in a formal email. It works for the weather, a room or water: “draußen ist es saukalt”, “das Wasser ist saukalt”. The noun “Saukälte” is in dictionaries, but people say the adjective.
Es ist saukalt
in real sentences
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Es ist saukalt.
It’s freezing.
Tatoeba, sentence by Sudajaengi, translation by CK, CC BY 2.0 FR
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Lass uns drinnen bleiben, draußen ist es saukalt.
Let’s stay inside. Outside it’s terribly cold.
Tatoeba, sentence by felix63, translation by Eccles17, CC BY 2.0 FR
Where does Es ist saukalt
come from?
No pig is involved. “Sau” (sow) works as an all-purpose intensifier in colloquial German, the way English uses “bloody”: English Wiktionary lists it in “sauteuer” (very expensive) and “Sauwetter” (filthy weather), and German Wiktionary lists “saukalt” as colloquial for very cold. Nobody has recorded when it first turned up.
Mistakes learners make with Es ist saukalt
Writing it as two words. “Sau kalt” is wrong; “sau” here is a prefix, so it’s one word: “saukalt”.
Other German idioms like Es ist saukalt
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?
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