German Idioms and False Friends: How to Remember 194 Flashcards
Learn German idioms like Das ist mir Wurst and false friends like Gift, bald and eventuell with the 194-card Flip It deck, plus which cards to fix or skip.
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German idioms are funny because they are literal: if you don't understand anything, you "only understand train station". German false friends are dangerous for the opposite reason: Gift is poison, bald means soon, and eventuell never means eventually. The Flip It deck German Idioms, Expressions & False Friends (deck code SK4346, 194 cards) splits cleanly into both: cards 1-98 are idioms with their literal translation, cards 99-194 are false friends.
Study this deck: German Idioms, Expressions & False Friends
1 / 10I don't understand anything (literally: I only understand train station)
Tap the card for the answer · swipe right if you knew it, left if not
A sample of the deck
| Front | Back |
|---|---|
| That is sausage to me (I don't care) | Das ist mir Wurst |
| To have tomatoes on one's eyes (be oblivious) | Tomaten auf den Augen haben |
| To step into the fat bowl (put one's foot in it) | Ins Fettnäpfchen treten |
| To render someone a bear service (do a disservice) | Jemandem einen Bärendienst erweisen |
| To carry owls to Athens (coals to Newcastle) | Eulen nach Athen tragen |
| Morning hour has gold in the mouth | Morgenstund hat Gold im Mund |
| eventuell | possibly / perhaps (NOT eventually) |
| sensibel | sensitive (NOT sensible) |
| Billion | trillion, 10^12 (NOT billion) |
| See (der) / See (die) | lake / sea |
What you'll learn
Idioms: Schwein haben, die Daumen drücken, nicht mein Bier, im Stich lassen, um den heißen Brei herumreden, auf Wolke sieben, die Katze im Sack kaufen, jemanden auf den Arm nehmen, einen Bären aufbinden, die Leviten lesen, die Nase voll haben, auf dem Holzweg sein, seinen Senf dazugeben, aus einer Mücke einen Elefanten machen, einen Kater haben, die Flinte ins Korn werfen, zwei Fliegen mit einer Klappe schlagen, Hals- und Beinbruch, nicht alle Tassen im Schrank haben, Äpfel mit Birnen vergleichen, einen Korb bekommen. False friends: bekommen, also, fast, Gymnasium, Chef, Handy, hell, Kind, Mist, Note, Rock, Stern, Taste, Wand, arm, brav, aktuell, Brief, Termin, spenden, sympathisch, prägnant, Präservativ, Provision, Kostüm, Rat, blank.
How to drill it
Idioms: learn the image, not the gloss. Picture the pig, the sausage, the bear on someone's back before flipping. Then say the full sentence with a subject ("Ich habe die Nase voll"): many idioms change form depending on the subject, the dative jemandem in particular.
False friends: make it a two-way trap. For each card, say the English look-alike and its real German word too: Gift = poison, gift = Geschenk; bekommen = get, become = werden; Handy = phone, handy = praktisch. Learning the false friend without its counterpart leaves you one step short.
Cards to fix or skip
- Duplicates: cards 1 and 70 (nur Bahnhof verstehen); 6 and 13 (Daumen drücken vs halten, the second mostly Austrian). Cards 37 and 98 both cover wie die Faust aufs Auge passen with opposite glosses: it originally meant a bad fit but today usually means a perfect fit (often ironic). Merge them into one card.
- Not German: card 100 is Norwegian gift. Delete it.
- Wrong: card 128 says See is the imperative "look": that's sieh!. Card 194 Flip is not the pinball machine, which is der Flipper.
- Not false friends: Tüte/toot, wie/wee, wo/woe, womit/wombat, Fahrt are sound jokes, and Konfetti, plausibel, rational, Fabrik, Weste are real cognates. Tag them "easy" so they don't take review time from the real traps.
- Gender matters: der See vs die See, die Bank (bench and bank). Always say the article. Our guide to German articles, genders and prepositions shows how. For the core vocabulary behind these idioms, see 358 high-frequency B1 German words.
Find German Idioms, Expressions & False Friends (SK4346) in the Flip It library.
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