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GERMAN · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

böse.

evil; malicious; wicked

4 characters2 syllables approx.Deutsch language

Meaning & usage

adj/ˈbøːzə/

  1. evil; malicious; wicked

    Unsere Taten können schlimme Folgen haben, selbst wenn wir keine bösen Absichten hatten.
    jemandem Böses wollen

  2. bad; naughty

    Böse Kinder kriegen nichts vom Sankt Nikolaus.

  3. mean, dark (of jokes, satire, tricks, etc.)

    Der Witz war böse.

  4. angry

    predicative
    Bist du böse auf mich?
Where this word comes from

From Middle High German bœse, bōse, from Old High German bōsi, from Proto-West Germanic *bausī, from Proto-Germanic *bausuz (“inflated, puffed up, arrogant, bad”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰew-, *bew- (“to blow, inflate, swell”), akin to Yiddish בייז (beyz), Dutch boos, and English boast.

adv/ˈbøːzə/

  1. nastily, evilly

Where this word comes from

From Middle High German bœse, bōse, from Old High German bōsi, from Proto-West Germanic *bausī, from Proto-Germanic *bausuz (“inflated, puffed up, arrogant, bad”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰew-, *bew- (“to blow, inflate, swell”), akin to Yiddish בייז (beyz), Dutch boos, and English boast.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.