Word
Komikern vars rutin var urdålig hade en stendöd publik.
Meaning
The comedian whose routine was terrible had a stone dead audience.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Komikern vars rutin var urdålig hade en stendöd publik.
vara
to be
en
a, an (common)
ha
to have
publiken
the audience
Questions & Answers about Komikern vars rutin var urdålig hade en stendöd publik.
Why do we use ur- for dålig (urdålig) and sten- for död (stendöd)? Can I swap them and say stendålig or urdöd?
While some intensifying prefixes like jätte- can be attached to almost any adjective, prefixes like sten- and ur- often form strong collocations (natural pairings) with specific words. Stendöd (stone dead) and urdålig (terribly bad) are fixed, highly idiomatic expressions. Swapping them to say stendålig or urdöd would sound quite unnatural to a Swedish speaker.
I thought the prefix ur- meant "original" or "ancient", like in urinvånare (indigenous people). Why does it mean "extremely" here?
You are right that ur- often denotes origin or something ancient (like ursprung, meaning "origin"). However, in colloquial Swedish, it is also a very productive intensifying prefix meaning "extremely" or "completely." You will frequently hear it attached to adjectives to maximize their degree, such as urdålig (extremely bad), ursnygg (gorgeous), or urbra (fantastic).
Does sten- in stendöd literally mean "stone"?