The Finnish Have a Word for Drinking at Home in Your Underwear
Finland has a word for “the feeling when you are going to get drunk home alone in your underwear — with no intention of going out.”
KatarzynaBialasiewicz
You could file this one under “Ideas long overdue.” However, we’re certainty that almost all of us have had this particular idea before — and have acted on it whenever given the opportunity. It’s just that we never had a word for it.
Now, thanks to Finland, we have a word for “the feeling when you are going to get drunk home alone in your underwear — with no intention of going out,” and it is Kalsarikannit.
That translation of the word is offered on thisisFINLAND, a website produced by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland offering “things you should and shouldn’t know” about the Nordic country. And this is definitely something we all need to know. Google translate gives Kalsarikannit a pithier definition: “Underweardrunk.”
Pronounced “kal-sa-ri-kan-nit,” the word has been around awhile, but the Ministry has just released a pair of emoji — along with more than 50 other “tongue-in-cheek” images conveying “hard-to-describe” Finnish emotions, words and customs — to proudly share its magic with the world.
The new Kalsarikannit emoji depict a very happy-looking man and woman lounging around in, yes, their underwear, holding their alcoholic beverages of choice (a beer for him, a glass of red wine for her).
America, surely no stranger to the state the word describes, has quickly embraced the word itself. The Chicago Tribune has hailed it as the new hygge, and whooped, “Rejoice, homebodies and misanthropes, for this is your new guideline to living well.” New York magazine declared that it “makes your sad weekend plans sound a little cooler.”
It’s catching on further afield, too, in Britain, for instance. The Independent suggested that Kalsarikannit “should be used whenever you’ve had a bad week, have an open bottle of gin and all your friends are busy.”
Seriously, who needs hygge — a Danish word meaning “a quality of coziness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being” that hit the global big-time in 2016, for those who haven’t been paying attention — when you’ve got a word like this?
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Photo: iStock
