Why do I need to know kurzweilig?
Though you're likely to have come across the opposite of this word already, kurzweilig is a great word to have in your active vocabulary.
Whether you want to talk about a class you've just joined or a new series you've been bingeing online, describing something as kurzweilig is a great way to give it a thumbs up and recommend it to your friends.
What does it mean?
Kurzweilig (pronounced like this) is a German adjective comprised of two words: kurz, meaning short, and weilig, meaning while. In English, you might translate it as entertaining, amusing or diverting, though it's also useful to keep its literal meaning - "short-while" - in mind.
That's because kurzweilig is especially good of getting to the heart of how something feels when it's truly entertaining. If a film is kurzweilig, for instance, it's so interesting that you lose track of time while watching it and the credits seems to be rolling in no time.
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The same goes for that feeling of time flying by as you read a gripping novel or engage in a deep conversation with a friend.
A useful way to remember kurzweilig is to think of its better-known antonym: langweilig, or boring. This word tends to be in every beginner German learner's vocabulary, perhaps because it describes the feeling you get when poring over verb conjugation tables. In other words, the feeling of time dragging on so slowly that it seems to have come to a standstill.
Use it like this:
Den ersten Film fand ich zu langsam, aber der zweite war kurzweilig.
I found the first film too slow, but the second was entertaining.
Thomas hat mir eine sehr kurzweilige Geschichte über seinen Urlaub erzählt.
Thomas told me a very entertaining story about his holiday.
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