German essential adjective vocabulary: 300 words
Describe anything — the adjectives you reach for every day (English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese). This page lists 40 of them with their German translations, then lets you practise the full set in either direction with spaced repetition.
English to German: the first 40 words
| English | German | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| good | gut | |
| bad | schlecht | |
| big | groß | |
| small | klein | |
| hot | heiß | |
| cold | kalt | |
| fast | schnell | |
| slow | langsam | |
| happy | glücklich | |
| sad | traurig | |
| angry | wütend | |
| afraid | ängstlich | |
| tired | müde | |
| hungry | hungrig | |
| thirsty | durstig | |
| sick | krank | |
| healthy | gesund | |
| strong | stark | |
| weak | schwach | |
| tall | groß | |
| short | klein | |
| long | lang | |
| new | neu | |
| old | alt | |
| young | jung | |
| dirty | schmutzig | |
| clean | sauber | |
| wet | nass | |
| dry | trocken | |
| soft | weich | |
| hard | hart | |
| smooth | glatt | |
| rough | rau | |
| dark | dunkel | |
| heavy | schwer | |
| sweet | süß | |
| bitter | bitter | |
| salty | salzig | |
| sour | sauer | |
| beautiful | schön |
260 more words in the full “Essential Adjectives” library, each aligned across seven languages and scheduled for you by spaced repetition. Add it to your account and start drilling English to German in one click.
What to watch out for in German
- Accents count. Answers are graded accent-sensitively, so you need
äöüßÄÖÜ— LinguaSwap shows a one-tap keypad for them while you type. - Capitalisation counts. German nouns are capitalised, and answers in German are graded that way —
hausis notHaus. - 59 words carry a usage note in the full library, for the cases where a direct translation would mislead you.
Practise German essential adjective vocabulary
Words come back just before you would forget them, and every language direction is tracked separately.