Vokabelspiel: Nenne fünf Dinge mit B

What does “Birne” mean in German?

Birne is the German word for pear — but let it loose in everyday speech and it does three jobs. There’s the pear you eat, the lightbulb overhead (short for Glühbirne, the “glowing pear,” named for its rounded shape), and, cheekily, your head. “Er hat nichts in der Birne” means he’s got nothing upstairs, and “eine weiche Birne haben” — a soft pear — marks someone as slow on the uptake.

The head sense is casual and a little teasing: fine among friends, too blunt for your boss. Glühbirne reads literally as glow-pear because early bulbs bulged like the fruit, and the name stuck even after the shapes changed. Here Birne turns up on a simple list of B-words for beginners, but it’s one of those innocent nouns that quietly moonlights all over the language.