English words from Swedish
6 English words with Swedish in their history, whether borrowed directly or passed on through other languages.
blunder
It is inherited from Middle English blundren, also blondren, probably borrowed from Old Swedish blundra (“to have one's eyes closed”), a frequentative of Old Norse blunda (“to shut the eyes”)…
dynamite
It is borrowed from Swedish dynamit, coined in 1867 by its inventor, the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, from Ancient Greek δύναμις (dúnamis, “power, force”) and the suffix -it (the English suffix…
gauntlet
There are two words. The glove is inherited from Middle English gantelet, borrowed from Middle French gantelet, a diminutive of gant “glove”, from Frankish *want. The punishment, as in run the…
nickel
It is borrowed from Swedish nickel, the name given to the metal by the mineralogist Axel von Cronstedt in 1754, shortened from kopparnickel, the copper-coloured ore from which he had first obtained…
smorgasbord
It is borrowed from Swedish smörgåsbord, from smörgås “bread and butter, open sandwich” and bord “table”. Smörgås is itself from smör “butter” and dialectal gås “lump of butter”, literally “goose”…
tungsten
It is borrowed from Swedish tungsten (“scheelite, calcium tungstate”), from tung (“heavy”) and sten (“stone”), "heavy stone". Barnhart and Klein say that it was coined by its discoverer, the Swedish…