Do people actually use "ehrfürchtig!" to say awesome or is it old in usage?
If not, then what would be more in common usage? I've heard mostly toll, super, prima but what else is possible?
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Sign up to join this communityDo people actually use "ehrfürchtig!" to say awesome or is it old in usage?
If not, then what would be more in common usage? I've heard mostly toll, super, prima but what else is possible?
Well first of all to me as a native German there is a clear difference between "ehrfürchtig" and awesome. I would rather translate ehrfürchtig with something like reverent or awestruck.
In my opinion you would rather use the following as a equivalent to awesome.
super, toll as you pointed out correctly but also "unglaublich" (unbelievable) and "wunderbar" (wonderful). Now as you notice both of them already have a translation. Still, in such cases though it heavily depends on the context, you can use words like "unglaublich" to describe something really awesome.
Lets say you are seeing an awesome landscape.
Das ist wirklich eine unglaubliche Landschaft.
Or some friend found a job after searching for quite a while: (Its so awesome you finally found a job!)
Es ist wirklich wunderbar, dass du endlich einen Job gefunden hast.
Well and last but not least lets not forget the colloquial ones:
"Hammer!", "Geil!", "Krass!" for example.
You wont hear those from everyone but they still exist.
Hope that helps :)
"Geil"
und "Krass"
können noch mit dem Prefix "End-"
gesteigert werden :)
– Harald
Sep 25 '14 at 9:33
To chime in with the others and add another aspect:
Note that "ehrfürchtig" never means "awesome". It describes the reaction to something that is awesome, NOT the fact that it is awesome. Leo and any other dictionaries that say otherwise are plain wrong.
The correct German equivalent (in a purely lexical sense) would be "ehrfurchtgebietend" (i.e. "demanding/causing awe"). Usage-wise, however, this is absolutely not equivalent to the casual "awesome" in English.
ehrfürchtig wouldn't be used as an exclamation, and I've actually never read it in that context, even in old literature.
The exclamation Awesome! would usually be translated as Großartig! or Erstaunlich!, while the latter is rather used in the context of Amazing!.