20 Swedish words for rain

It feels like it has rained for ever in Stockholm. We awaken to rain, we walk in the rain, we come home in the rain, and we go to bed to the sound of the rain.

I guess the wetness is positive as it is replenishing the water magazines that have dried out, and soaking the forest beds to extinguish any lingering embers from the forest fires.

But it is so boring and a bit depressing. In English, we have lots of words for rain, with some fun ones such as drizzle, mizzle, sleet, spit and ‘ache and pain’.

So I became curious about how many Swedish words there are. Here are 20 that I found:

  1. Regn – rain
  2. Duggregn – a light rain, spit
  3. Dusk – drizzle
  4. Snöblandad regn – rain mixed with snow, sleet
  5. Hällregn – heavy rain, pouring down
  6. Ösregn – torrential rain
  7. Skyfall – sudden heavy rain, a cloud burst
  8. Skur – shower
  9. Störtregn – heavy rain, a downpour
  10. Skval – constant, uninterrupted rain
  11. Sommarregn – light, summer rain
  12. Regnby – rain shower
  13. Slagregn – heavy rain, a deluge
  14. Glopp – rain with large snow flakes in
  15. Arlaregn – refreshing morning rain
  16. Strilregn – steady rain
  17. Nederbörd – precipitation
  18. Dagsregn – precipitation
  19. Regndroppe – rain drop
  20. Rotblöta – a large amount of rain, usually in the summer

So the next time, look out of the window and see what word best describes the rain outside. It might at least give you a few seconds of distraction in this November drudge.

4 thoughts on “20 Swedish words for rain

  1. I ve hardly tried to see and than to catch follow symbol but finally succeded.Because just while changing the page that it appears.I think there is a probleme.It should be even to see.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s