Word of the Day – “der Fluss” (2023)

Hello everyone,

and welcome to our German Word of the Day. This time we’ll have a look at the meaning of

der Fluss

Sounds like a boring topic. Fluss means river;most of you know that, I think. And who wants to read about Fluss? I mean, except a Flussologist (riverologist in English, in my fantasy version of it anyway).

But Fluss is not just ariver,it’s a stream. A stream of useful words and in that stream many surprising connections dwell. So let’s go fishing. Or better yet, let’s dive right in.
Splashhhh.

The crazy family of Fluss

The word Fluss is obviously not related to river. River comes from some Latin word that was moreabout the riverbankbutthere aren’t any interesting connections to anything. Well, except the word rival, which comes from the idea that someone uses the same stream as you to water their field.
The family of Fluss on the other hand is just crazy. At the heart isthe uber ancient Indo European root *pleu. The core inspiration wasrunning water and the root has evolved into many words that are somehow related to that idea. In English, we haveflow, float, fleetor flood. These ones are quite obvious but there are more. For exampletoflee,which ties in with thespeed of running water, I guess. And then there’s to fly. Sounds crazy, but just think of an eagle in the air…. that does look a lot like floating.
On the German side, we have essentially the same words, just in German: Die Flotte (fleet), die Flut (flood), das Floß (the raft) and die Flosse (the fin of a fish) and of course also fliegen (fly), fliehen(flee),Flug (flight) and Flucht (flight, escape). Oh, and of course also the Romance languages have their bunch of pleu-words. There’s the branch around flux and fluid (which also exists in English) and there arethe words for to rain –pleuvoirin French, pioverein Italian – and you know what.. this actually ALSO made itinto English: pluvial. Man,English is such a Latin fanboy.I have never heard pluvial anywherebut apparently it means relatedto rainor characterized by rainso I guess this is how you would use it.

Gee, this summer better be f-in’ awesome.
Lastsummer was f-ing pluvial.

Meh…maybe not.
Anyway,so this is the fascinating family of Fluss. Now let’s get to some cool, useful Fluss-words.

Cool, useful Fluss-words

Let’s start with Fluss itself. We know that tt can mean river. But it can also means flow.

• Die fielen Rechtscraibfeler stören den Lesefluß.
• The many thaipos disrubt the reading flow.
  (fhere’s the proper German:… Die vielen Rechtschreibfehler stören den Lesefluss)
  

• Alles ist im Fluss.
• Everything flows.
  (lit.: Everything is in flux)
  (By the way…here’s a picture of a nice art installation that took the wise saying of this exampleliterally. Like… SUPERliterally ;).
  

Now, I think we shouldmention,that in recent years, the wordflow has started to enter the German language in some areas. In context of music you wouldn’t say “Fluss”, you’d say “flow“. Andin the working worldpeople will likely say work flow and instead of Arbeitsflussand flow chart instead of Flussdiagramm because… you know… it’s just so much cooooooler.

Anyway,back to Fluss-words. There are 5 in particularthat are really good to know. The first one is der Abfluss.
Abfluss expresses the general idea of something flowing away from somewhere. The reason why it’s so useful however, is the fact that it’s THE word for … the drain, as in kitchen drain. The “off-flow”.

• Der Abfluss ist schon wieder verstopft.
• The drain ist clogged again.

The second super useful word is derEinfluss. Literally, it would be the “inflow”and that’s just a step away from the actual meaning:influence. I think I don’t need to mention where fluence comes from :).

• Thomas hat in der Firma viel Einfluss.
• Thomas has a lot of clout/influence in the company.

• Die Gewerkschaft ist klein aber sehr einflussreich.
• The workers union is small but very influential/powerful.
  

Of course, there’s also the verb to influence:beeinflussen. And yes, that’s more complicated than it needs to be and yes, the double-e does look a bit funny.

• Das Buch hat mich sehr beeinflusst.
• That book has influenced me quite a bit.

• Die Art, wie die Frage gestellt ist, kann die Antwort beeinflussen.
• The way the question is phrased can influence the answer.

All right.
The third super cool and super useful Fluss-word is dasÜberfluss. Literally, it me… what? Oh you want to know why it’s das and not dereven thoughit’s der Fluss? Well, you’re totally right. It’sder Überfluss… I was just testing you ;). So, literally der Überfluss isoverflow.It’s not used in the literal sense of stuff actually spilling over an edge but the idea of too muchis still totally in there.Überfluss meansabundancein sense ofmore than needed.

• Wir leben in einer Überflussgesellschaft.
• We live in an affluent society.
  (uhm… affluent… connection anyone)

• Deutschland hat Wasser im Überfluss. Doch die Verbraucher sparen trotzdem wie verrückt – ein Problem für die Kanalisation.
• Germany has water in abundance. But people save water anyway – a problem for the sewerage.

• Zu allem Überfluss ist auch noch mein Fahrrad kaputtgegangen. (common expression)
• To make matters even worse my bike broke down.

More common than the noun is the adjective überflüssigand this one actually has a literal translation… drumroll please…superfluous.Super like über and fluous is a variation of fluid.
In practice überflüssig is used for quite a range of English words (dispensable, gratuitous, unnecessary,… ) but the idea is always the same.

• Viele Apps sind total überflüssig. Diese App sagt dir, welche.
• Many apps are totally pointless. This app tells you which ones.

• Die besten 10 Tips wie man überflüssige Meetings meiden kann.
• The best 10 tips how toavoid going to gratuitous meetings.

Of course,flüssigalso works on its own. AndI think by now you can already guess what that means… exactly, itcan mean fluent, fluid orliquid. And the noun is die Flüssigkeitand means theliquid or thefluidand I have to say… Ireally don’t understand why English uses different words here. I mean, it’s one idea and I thinkhaving different words for it, is confusing and makes it hard to learn the langu… what? … ohhhhhhhhh… right. Sorry, I forgot I’m teaching German. I really should shut up about two words for one thing.

• Wasser ist flüssig.
• Water is liquid.

• Thomas liest flüssig.
• Thomas reads with a good flow.

• Im Sommer muss man viel trinken, um den Flüssigkeitsverlust auszugleichen.
• In summer you have to drink a lot to compensate for the loss of fluid.

Cool.
Now, all we’ve seen so far was based on the noun der Fluss. But of course we also need to mention the verb…. fließen.

fließen

Fließen is what water and other liquids do… to flow, to run. But of course it’s used in a bunch of more abstract contexts, too. For example for electricity, money or thoughts.

• Der Fluss fließt zum Meer.
• The river flows to the sea.

• Wenn Thomas was getrunken hat, fließen die Ideen regelrecht aus ihm raus.
• When Thomas has had a drink, the ideas are virtually flowing out of him.

• Bisher sind 300 Millionen Euro in das Projekt geflossen.
• So far, 300 million Euro have been invested in the project.

The moreabstract fließen isby far not as common as its English brothertoflow,though. Like.. you wouldn’t say that a meeting fließt or that a story fließt. That’s just not idiomatic.

Prefix-version-wise, fließen is rather soft on us. Sure, there are some but they’re not that useful andI think you can understand all of them when you see them in context.

• Der Test fließt nicht in die Endnote ein.
• The test is not included into the final grade/will not influence the final grade.
  (lit.: doesn’t flow into)
  

• Die Butter zerfließt auf den heißen Kartoffeln.
• The butter melts all over the hot potatoes.
  (lit.: flows apart)
  

A nice compound isdas Fließbandwhich is much more descriptive than its English translationassembly line. A flowing strap.

• Wir arbeiten hier wie am Fließbandum das Projekt fertig zu kriegen.
• We’re working like on an assembly line here to get the project finished.

And of course we need to mention fließendwhichis what all language learners want :)… “flowing” or fluent.
Actually, fließend is more like fluently.

• I am fluent in German.
• Ich bin fließend in Deutsch…. NOPE!!!

This is not idiomatic in German because fließendjust isn’t used to describe a person. It’s used to describe the process. So in German you’d say

• Ich spreche fließend Deutsch.
• I’m speaking German fluently (lit.)

Oh, and then we mustn’t forget the wordfluencywhich is quite the buzz word in the language learning community. You know all the ads and titles:

“We’ll take you to fluency in no time”
“Here’s how to reach fluency in 3 days”
“Fluency is only a month (and 350 bucks) away”

So what’s the translation for fluency? The answer is … hold on.. that’s weird… noword? There HAS tobe one somwhe…
“There isn’t!”
What??? Hello? Who.. who said that?
“It is I, you idiot. German. And I don’t have a word for fluency.”
But… you have a word for like… everything.
“Not for this?”
But why not?
“Because peoplecannot reach fluency in me. I’m too difficult.”
No, you’re not. I know plenty of people who have learned you andreached fluency.
“That’s impossible.”
No, it’s not.
“But … what about all my genders and my endings.”
People can master those.
“Oh they do?! Then… then I’ll add more genders… yeah, more genders. From now on there’s also do and dun. Yeah, and I’ll add a new case, as well. The Confusative. And I’ll add exceptions and …”
German! Calm down… why do you always have to pretend to be so tough?
“I don’t know… “
Have you been drinking?
“A little. I… uh… Someone on the Internet said I’m so harsh and clunky. And that made me sad. And angry.”
It’s okay German,manypeople really like you.
“Oh… sob … really? People really want to learn me? “
Yeah, trust me. Now go home and get some rest and then maybe come up with a word for fluency, okay?
“Okay… I’ll do that. Say hey to the students for me, okay.”
I will.

Wow… that was strange. Maybe it’s time to get out of the sun. But I think we’ve bathed in the river enough for one day anyway, so let’s get out and drink a beer at theriverside and reminisce about all the words we’ve learned :).
This was our German Word of the Day derFluss. Many know it as river, but the core idea is flow and the translations for many of the cool Fluss-words like Einfluss or überflüssig are actually directly related to Fluss. Check out the vocab section for all the words we had today and some more, and asalways, if you have any questions or suggestions just leave me a comment.
I hope you liked it and see you next time.

* vocab*

der Fluss – the river, the stream
das Floß – the raft
die Flut – the flood
die Flotte – the fleet
die Flosse – the fin (fish)

der Abfluss – the drain, plughole of a sink
der Einfluss – the influence
beeinflussen – to influence
der Überfluss – abundance
der Zufluss – the influx

fließen (ist geflossen) – flow (also for electricity)
abfließen – flow away (water in a sink for example, also for funds)
fließend – fluently (language)

flüssig – liquid, with a good flow
überflüssig – superfluous
die Flüssigkeit – the liquid

fliegen – to fly
die Fliege – the fly
der Flug – the flight
fliehen – to flee
die Flucht – the flight, escape
der Flüchtling – the fugitive

float – schwimmen (for stuff that doesn’t sink)