It probably happens to you about once a month. I first noticed it after I fixed my oven. I had it again when I pulled a redundant network card out of my computer. The most recent example was when I filled in my tax return.
It is technishererfolgangabemangelsfrust. Or, if you translate it from the German: the frustration caused by having a sense of achievement for completing a technical task but being unable to boast about it because it is too boring.
It’s the sort of emotion that ought to have a word in English, but doesn’t. It doesn’t really have a word in German either, but the beauty of the language is that you can coin new words by lumping shorter ones together. (Schadenfreude [harm-joy] being the most obvious example.)
It comes as a huge comfort to me after the annoyance of that bloody oven. It died in the middle of a lunch party and remained broken for six months while I made half-hearted attempts to get an electrician to come round and fix it. It seemed fairly obvious what was wrong: the element was broken. No one wanted to turn up on an evening or weekend, so I took days off to wait for workmen to arrive. They didn’t. Eventually I found the part on the internet and pulled the oven out from the wall. Simple enough, I thought, but hang on, what are these screws with indentations in the shape of six-pointed stars?
The bastards at Bosch had tried to prevent anyone but their own technicians from opening the back of the oven by using Torx screws, which have a deliberately obscure indentation to deter the layman. Hah. I bought a Torx screwdriver and finished the job. I was so overjoyed that I baked my first and, to date, only Victoria sponge.
I wanted to crow about this gargantuan effort, but the faces of anyone I told would glaze over faster than sand at a nuclear test site. Technishererfolgangabemangelsfrust at its purest.
Sunday, October 29, 2006 at 3:01 pm |
It’s not only technishererfolgangabemangelsfrust you have experienced here, but also glückambesiegendesmannes coming from beating the Bosch.
Wednesday, November 1, 2006 at 6:47 pm |
A triumph of a word, both in reality and in Scrabble. What does it mean?
Wednesday, November 8, 2006 at 5:15 pm |
It means: “great fortune from having beaten The Man”. And no, it’s not really German.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 2:18 pm |
Just felt the need to record a particularly potent wave of technishererfolgangabemangelsfrust having just successfully sent an email newsletter to 86 recipients in 36.83 seconds.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007 at 1:07 am |
A fine example. Especially the inclusion of two decimal points.