Friday, April 22, 2022

Finding an English phrase to correspond to German "reinfeiern"

Last Saturday, my daughter's birthday party began on the eve of her actual birthday and ran past midnight. German has a word for this: "reinfeiern" – "partying into" a birthday. But today, when I read a 111-word text by a student about "partying into" her birthday, that English phrase sounded odd to me. LEO offers only a paraphrase, while Dict.cc offers "party into". A Google search for "partied into her birthday" turns up five hits, one of which even adds, "as they say in German". I had to read the LEO forums to finally find one form that captures the sense idiomatically, to my ear – "a party to see my birthday in". (Andrew Shields, #111words, 22 April 2022)

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