Do you ever find yourself alone at home, cracking open a tinnie in your underwear, when you get a text asking what you’re up to?
Short of sending a selfie depicting the bubble of tipsy isolation you’ve created for one blissful evening of drinking wine in your pants, there’s not one word in the English language that could sum up such a joyful evening of peace and quiet.
But don’t worry; Finland has us covered.
Apparently the pastime of drinking alone in your underwear at home is held in such high regard in Finland, that the Finnish people have invented a singular, all-encompassing word to describe the hobby.
The word is ‘kalsarikännit’, and according to Indy 100, it should be used whenever you’ve had a bad week, have an open bottle of gin and all your friends are busy – just in time for Valentine’s Day.
This Is Finland describe the term as:
The feeling when you are going to get drunk home alone in your underwear – with no intention of going out.
What’s better – the Fins pay homage to pant-donning and drinking alone that they’ve come up with two emojis to encapsulate the feeling; one for a boy and one for a girl.
The characters are just two in a series of 56 emojis that have been released in the hopes of capturing complex Finnish emotions and words… Keep your hygge – kalsarikännit is the one for me.
So, get home, strip down to your pants and raise a glass to Finland and their fantastically useful language.
A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.