Schmarrn

What it means

1. 1.

   Nonsense, rubbish, tripe. Bavarian and Austrian, and the standard way of dismissing something someone has just said.

2. 2.

   Also 'a whole load of nothing': 'a Schmarrn hab i davon' means I got precisely nothing out of it.

Literally: A shredded pancake — as in Kaiserschmarrn.

Examples with translations

• Red kan Schmarrn.

  Don't talk rubbish.

  Note: Bavarian for 'red keinen Schmarrn' — one of the most-heard sentences in the state.

• So ein Schmarrn steht in der Zeitung?

  They printed that nonsense in the paper?

Where it comes from

The same word as the dish: a Schmarrn is something torn into shapeless bits, from a dialect verb meaning to smear or scrape. Rubbish talk is talk in shreds. The Kaiserschmarrn story about Franz Joseph's ruined pancake is a later legend attached to the dish, not the source of the word.

Other forms

Similar terms:

Quatsch, Blödsinn, Unsinn