Zwickmühle

German

Etymology

Alteration of older Fickmühle, a compound of ficken +‎ Mühle, in which ficken is used in the archaic sense of “to slide”. The alteration was without doubt driven by the need to avoid the vulgar verb. Formally it may be due to conflation with an unattested *Zwiemühle from zwie- (“double”), as well as to association with zwicken (“to pinch”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈtsvɪkˌmyːlə/, [ˈt͡sʋɪkˌmyːlə]

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: Zwick‧müh‧le

Noun

Zwickmühle f (genitive Zwickmühle, plural Zwickmühlen)

1. (nine men's morris) double mill
2. (figurative) dilemma; Catch-22; quagmire; predicament; quandary (position in which one will suffer great disadvantage however one reacts)

Declension

Declension of Zwickmühle [feminine]

	singular			plural
	indef.	def.	noun	def.	noun
nominative	eine	die	Zwickmühle	die	Zwickmühlen
genitive	einer	der	Zwickmühle	der	Zwickmühlen
dative	einer	der	Zwickmühle	den	Zwickmühlen
accusative	eine	die	Zwickmühle	die	Zwickmühlen

Further reading

• Zwickmühle on the German Wikipedia.Wikipedia ^de
• “Zwickmühle” in Duden online
• “Zwickmühle” in Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache