No it’s NOT just semantics!

The FameWorks were in Germany again last week, where everyone seemed to be talking about Dunkelflaute.  Back in the UK this week, the very same German word came up in a couple of conversations.

What linguists call loan words find their way into a language because they convey concepts and nuances of meaning that the native vocabulary can’t.    Thus the Cantonese wok is more than a round-bottomed frying pan; it expresses a distinctive cooking method and taste outcome.  Lingerie brings a promise of gallic sensuality that the solid English women’s underwear somehow misses.  And kompromat evokes a lugubrious world of venality and danger so much better than the bland damaging information. English (and many other languages) are full of these loan words.

So what is it about Dunkelflaute that makes it a good bet to become part of everyday English vocabulary in 2025?

Dunkelflaute (literally dark calm) describes, in one neat word,  a period of time in which little or no energy can be generated by solar or wind power, because the sun’s not out and the wind is not blowing.  It’s more friendly and immediate than the technical anticyclonic gloom and far shorter than [see previous sentence].  This efficient word transforms a rather abstract notion into a thing.  And a thing of vital importance moreover...

In the  transition, the key problem today is less how to generate energy (solar and wind are getting progressively cheaper)  and more how to store, so as to align supply with demand. And the storage technology isn’t there yet. Hence Dunkelflaute – the existential problem that the human race must solve.

Loan words are worth contemplating: not all present quite such fundamental resonance as Dunkelflaute, but they all have a story to tell about a culture and its people.