Title Comment Comment Date Comment Link
Swedish words and phrases of the day (from "How to Learn Swedish in 1000 Difficult Lessons")

It sounds like an oldfashioned way of saying "sex out of wedlock". "Otidigt" would be "in the wrong time" (as in the saying "i tid och otid", literally "in time and un-time", meaning "in good timing and in bad timing" or, simply, "always"). Today, outside of sayings where a bit of archaic language sometimes remain, the word means "rude" or "rudely", but this is probably not the case here. Sangelag would literally mean "laying in bed". So, this gives us the meaning, "laying in bed in the wrong time".Which, given the time and place, I take to mean "having sex before marriage"

9/14/2007 View
Swedish words and phrases of the day (from "How to Learn Swedish in 1000 Difficult Lessons")

Literally "taken home", since the context is an obituary my guess is it's an euphemism for "died" (as in taken home to heaven by the Lord). It is used that way, too, but it's of course hard to tell without having the entire text.

9/14/2007 View