This sentence appears among the subtitles to a recent Tatort:
Tauchst nach all den Jahren wieder auf und puhlst in der schlimmsten Wunde meines Lebens?
I am unable to find any reference to the word, puhlst/puhlen. Please advise. Is this a typo?
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Sign up to join this communityThis sentence appears among the subtitles to a recent Tatort:
Tauchst nach all den Jahren wieder auf und puhlst in der schlimmsten Wunde meines Lebens?
I am unable to find any reference to the word, puhlst/puhlen. Please advise. Is this a typo?
The word is pulen / du pulst. It's a northern German word. There is no good English equivalent, it basically means to fiddle around / tamper with something using your fingers, often taking something off while doing it. It also means to peel off the paring of fruit or to shell a prawn ("Krabben pulen"). "In der Nase pulen" means to pick one's nose.
"In alten Wunden pulen" would be tampering with and potentially opening old wounds, which is used in a figurative sense in the Tatort line.
"Puhlst" is a spelling mistake, and an understandable one. If German spelling was logical, it should probably be "puhlen", but for some reason it stayed "pulen".