Slutte | Danish Grammar

Slutte is the everyday Danish verb for something coming to an end — a film, a meeting, a relationship, a sentence. It is a regular weak verb, so once you have its four principal parts you can produce every tense it has. The tricky part is not the conjugation but the meaning: Danish carefully distinguishes slutte (to end/conclude) from stoppe/holde op (to stop doing something) and from afslutte (to formally complete). This page sorts that out.

Principal parts

Infinitive	Present	Past	Past participle	Imperative
(at) slutte	slutter	sluttede	sluttet	slut!

Slutte belongs to the large -ede weak class (like arbejde, vente, danse): past sluttede, participle sluttet. There is nothing irregular to memorise here.

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Danish verbs never change for person or number. Slutter is the present form for I, you, he, we, they alike — jeg slutter, du slutter, vi slutter are all identical. You will never add an ending to agree with the subject, which is one fewer thing to track than in English's he ends vs they end.

Present tense

The plain present slutter describes when something ends, including scheduled or habitual endings — the same form covers English "ends" and "is ending."

Filmen slutter klokken ti.

The film ends at ten o'clock.

Mødet slutter altid for sent.

The meeting always ends too late.

Hvornår slutter sommerferien i år?

When does the summer holiday end this year?

Note that in the first two examples slutte is intransitive — the film and the meeting end by themselves; there is no object. You can also use it transitively, "to bring something to an end":

Lad os slutte mødet nu — klokken er mange.

Let's end the meeting now — it's getting late.

Past tense

The simple past sluttede reports a completed ending.

Koncerten sluttede med et stort fyrværkeri.

The concert ended with a big fireworks display.

De sluttede deres samarbejde efter ti år.

They ended their collaboration after ten years.

Present perfect

The perfect uses har + the participle sluttet. Because slutte describes a change of state with a clear endpoint, you might expect være (as with gå → er gået), but standard Danish takes har here: the focus is on the event, not on a resulting location.

Filmen er først lige begyndt — den har ikke sluttet endnu.

The film has only just begun — it hasn't ended yet.

Vi har sluttet projektet før tid.

We've finished the project ahead of schedule.

Key collocations and expressions

A handful of fixed combinations carry most of the verb's everyday weight. Learn these as whole chunks.

Expression	Meaning
slutte af (med)	to round off / finish up (with)
slutte sig til	to join (a group, a movement)
til slut	finally, in the end (adverbial)
en slutning	an ending, a conclusion (noun)
slutte fred	to make peace

Vi sluttede af med en kop kaffe.

We rounded things off with a cup of coffee.

Hun sluttede sig til klubben sidste år.

She joined the club last year.

Til slut vil jeg gerne takke alle for hjælpen.

Finally, I'd like to thank everyone for their help.

Note the difference between the verb slutte and the frozen adverbial til slut. Til slut is a sequencing word — useful when you list steps and want to mark the last one. Pair it with først (first) and derefter (then); see discourse/sequential for the full set of ordering connectors.

Slutte vs stoppe vs afslutte — the meaning split

This is where English speakers stumble, because English "finish/stop/end" overlap loosely while Danish keeps them apart by what kind of thing is ending.

slutte — something comes to its natural end (a film, an era, a sentence). Often intransitive.
stoppe / holde op (med) — someone ceases an ongoing activity. Takes a person as the one stopping, and usually med
- activity.
afslutte — to formally complete something you were carrying out (a course, a deal, a degree). Always transitive, more deliberate.

Mødet slutter klokken tre.

The meeting ends at three (it reaches its end).

Jeg holder op med at ryge.

I'm quitting smoking (I cease the activity).

Hun afsluttede sin uddannelse i juni.

She completed her degree in June (formally finished it).

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A quick test: if you could say "comes to an end" in English, reach for slutte. If you mean "a person stops doing something," you want stoppe or holde op med. If you mean "brings a formal undertaking to completion," that's afslutte. See verb-reference/stoppe for the cease-an-activity verb in full.

A dialogue

– Hvornår slutter forestillingen? – Den slutter omkring klokken elleve, og bagefter slutter vi af på en café.

– When does the show end? – It ends around eleven, and afterwards we'll round off the evening at a café.

Common mistakes

❌ Jeg vil slutte med at ryge.

Incorrect — slutte med doesn't mean 'quit an activity'; that's holde op med / stoppe med.

✅ Jeg vil holde op med at ryge.

I want to quit smoking.

❌ Filmen stopper klokken ti.

Odd — stoppe suggests it was halted; a film that reaches its natural end uses slutte.

✅ Filmen slutter klokken ti.

The film ends at ten.

❌ Hun sluttede sin eksamen med topkarakter.

Incorrect — completing a formal undertaking takes afslutte, not slutte.

✅ Hun afsluttede sin eksamen med topkarakter.

She completed her exam with top marks.

❌ Vi har sluttet os klubben.

Incorrect — the reflexive 'join' needs the preposition til.

✅ Vi har sluttet os til klubben.

We have joined the club.

❌ Mødet er sluttet ikke endnu.

Incorrect — Danish places ikke before the participle in a main clause: har ikke sluttet.

✅ Mødet har ikke sluttet endnu.

The meeting hasn't ended yet.

Key takeaways

Slutte is a regular -ede verb: slutter / sluttede / sluttet, imperative slut!
It means a thing comes to an end; it is most often intransitive but can be transitive (slutte mødet).
The perfect takes har, not være.
Keep it apart from stoppe / holde op med (a person ceasing an activity) and afslutte (formally completing something).
Master the chunks slutte af, slutte sig til, and the adverb til slut.

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