Imagine you're buying something in a little shop on a German high street, you go to pay and you find yourself tempted to buy one of the little trinkets or goodies adorning the counter.
"What are these things called?" you ask yourself.
Krimskrams is the answer.
What does it mean?
Essentially, der Krimskrams means a collection of random items - similar to "odds and ends" or "bits and bobs" in English. It's most often used to refer to items like knickknacks, trinkets, or miscellaneous objects, and encompasses those small, often insignificant items that accumulate over time.
From this word, you also get the colloquial term Kram which means "stuff" in general. You might hear someone saying, for example:
Das Auto ist vollgepackt mit seinem Kram.
The car is full of his stuff.
Where does it come from?
The word Krimskrams has its roots in North Germany and is a younger variant of Kribbeskrabbes or Kribskrabs - melodic words dating back to the 16th century used to capture the essence of a jumble.
The expression also makes appearances in other languages as well. In Danish, it denotes clutter and junk, and in Swedish it means "scribbles".
Use it like this:
Ich habe all diesen Krimskrams in meiner Schublade gefunden.
I found all these odds and ends in my drawer.
Können wir all diesen Krimskrams bitte wegwerfen?
Can we please throw away all this clutter?
Die Kinder lieben es, durch den Krimskrams im Flohmarkt zu stöbern.
The children love to browse through the odds and ends at the flea market.
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