53 Comments
I choose to see this word as saying that someone who is handsome should be snuggled nods sagely
15
"snygg" is not a masculine adjective, and can be used to describe basically everything. "Den där kvinnan är snygg" ("that woman is good-looking"), "jag hittade en snygg jacka på rean" ("I found a nice jacket on sale") etc.
I meant "he is so pretty", not "he is pretty handsome". Thanks anyway!
I think pretty and snygg don't correlate all too well, despite a considerable overlap. Snygg is more pretty as in hot and/or handsome, while pretty is more beautiful, isn't it?
- 15
I, as a native Swedish person, would probably translate "söt" into "pretty" or "cute", and "snygg" into "hot" or "handsome".
In American English, pretty is more often referring to the beauty of a female or object while handsome is generally only used to describe males. He is pretty and she is handsome just aren't very common statements, though I have heard the former a few times. Cute is a more gender neutral term, but refers to a specific type of beauty, usually with some indication of smallness or daintiness, such as childlike or youthful features.
- 379
Also this has changed over time; women were called "handsome" a century+ ago, for example.
Fun fact: Snygg is actually a Swedish surname.
Back in the days, it was common or even mandatory for soldiers to be given a soldier's nom de guerre upon enlistment in the army. These could for example be some military nouns like Lans, Sköld and Svärd (Lance, Shield, Sword) or taken from nature, such as Björk, Ström and Berg (Birch, Stream, Mountain). Sometimes this name would be an adjective descriptive of some quality of the person. Thus, there are also surnames like Modig (courageous), Rask (quick), Sträng (strict, severe) or... Snygg. Which used to mean something like "petite", but changed meaning over the centuries to todays "hot" or "handsome". With time, they became family names in the 1800s and thus we today have a handful of soldiers' names being perfectly normal surnames today.
A friend of mine actually carries the surname Snygg, and yes, he is tired of hearing that it's sooooo funny. :p
- 888
vacker is typically more about classical beauty. snygg is a 'younger and cooler' word, in meaning more like 'good-looking'.
So would you use 'vacker' for something like a painting or a building, or can it be for people too? And is 'snygg' exclusively for people and refers to attractiveness?
- 888
vacker can be about people, buildings, or paintings etc.
snygg works for all those things too but we don't normally use it about nature. Like, we'd say en vacker skog 'a beautiful forest' but less likely en snygg skog, because of what I said in my previous comment.
What is the difference between "snygg" and "snygge" ? When I use the form ending in e, it was marked as incorrect.
"-e" adjective forms work the same as definite adjective forms, except they're used for male nouns. It's a bit of a leftover from older Swedish where there were both feminine and masculine genders.
It's only used before definite singular nouns, so:
"Den snygge mannen", but "En snygg man" and "Mannen är snygg".
in english a boy is said ti be handsome and a girl is the one described as pretty
- 888
Only if you want to be conventional. The conventional Swedish options would be stilig and söt, respectively. snygg is a newer word in the sense 'good-looking' (it used to mean 'neat, clean') and doesn't carry any gendered connotation.
Can anybody tell me the difference between "very" and " so " here, please !?
- 888
'very' and its Swedish counterparts such as väldigt, mycket etc mean 'to a large degree'.
'so' and så can mean either 'to an extent that is clear from context' or 'to a large extent' but if it means the latter, it's more emphatic and emotional than mycket/'very'.
This works pretty much the same in Swedish & English so go with så for 'so' and mycket etc for 'very'.
They, uhm, are pronounced, though... it's just not as audible as a clear g.
- 505
I thought snygg can also be translated as "nice" but my answer was rejected.
No, snygg is only in the sense of being beautiful or handsome, so "nice" doesn't really work as a good translation.
A bit of "useless information" for those who like that kind of thing --
The words snug (English) and snygg (Swedish) are almost certainly related. The original basic meaning of the former word was "compact, trim" and that of the latter "neat, tidy". By extension of meaning snygg came to signify "handsome", and in Lancashire dialect snug means not just "tight(-fitting)" but also ..."handsome".
- 682
Yeah, you're probably right. German “schnuckelig” seems to be onomatopoetic, either from suck/eat sweets/kiss https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Schnuckel or (better attested, apparently) from sheep sounds. https://www.dwds.de/wb/Schnuckel
