List of English words of Norwegian origin
Some words from the Norwegian language have entered into common English usage. Many of the words relate to the climate and culture of Norway, such as skiing. In total the English language has received around 600 loanwords from Scandinavian languages, while it is estimated that 2% of all English words are of Norse origin.
Not all of these words are decisively from Norwegian. They may be from other Scandinavian languages (Danish and Swedish), or may come from Old Norse, before it evolved into separate languages. Some may also not be directly from Norwegian, but through languages such as Swedish, Danish, German and French and may also have other alternate spellings in English / than the ones described below.
- Aquavit (also akevitt, a kind of distilled spirit made of potatoes or grain. Also Swedish and Danish)
- Berserk (destructively or frenetically violent)
- Brisling (small, herring-like, marine fish)
- Fjord (a long indentation of a sea)
- Floe (as in ice floe, a river ice slide)
- Klister (a kind of ski wax, from the word for glue or paste; also common Scandinavian)
- Krill (small shrimp-like animal)
- Lemming (lemen, a rodent species)
- Lefse (Norwegian potato flatbread similar to a tortilla)
- Lutefisk (fish course made from dried fish and lut (lye)).
- Quisling (a traitor, from Vidkun Quisling)
- Ski (equipment for skiing activities; originally a general word for a plank or chop of wood)
- Skrei (From a word meaning "flock" or "crowd", a sprawn-ready codfish)
- Slalom (slalåm; not too steep downhill skiing with many gates and turns)
- Telemark (a type of ski turn or style of skiing named for the Telemark region in Norway)
- Uff da (interjection, other English spellings of this word include oofda, ufda, oofta and ufta.)
- Yngling (sailing boat class, from an archaic Norwegian word for "youngster")
- This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
Bob is Norwegian for hello
See also
- Lists of English words of international origin
- List of English words of Swedish origin
- List of English words of Scandinavian origin
- List of English words of Old Norse origin
- The category of words with Norwegian derivations at Wiktionary, Wikipedia's sister project
- The category of words with Danish derivations at Wiktionary, Wikipedia's sister project
- The category of words with Swedish derivations at Wiktionary, Wikipedia's sister project
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