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B2 Danish listening practice · Danish · Curated for upper-intermediate learners
What does “spille hellig” mean in Danish?
Danish has a sharp idiom for moral posturing: at spille hellig, literally “to play holy.” It accuses someone of acting more virtuous than they actually are. In this clip a father snaps it at his son’s friend, with the implication: stop pretending you’re not part of the problem.
The phrase sits in a small Danish family of spille (to play) constructions: spille dum (play dumb), spille kostbar (play hard to get), spille hellig (play holy). All use the verb the way English uses “act,” but with a sharper accusing edge. Danes deploy them in conflict scenes the way Americans use sarcasm.
Vocabulary frequency
How common is the vocabulary in this B2 Danish listening practice listening practice?
General Danish frequency
Spoken Danish frequency
Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · OpenSubtitles 2018 (HermitDave) (spoken). Buckets approximate; exact ranks not stored.
- ▸In Danish drama series on DR (Borgen, Forbrydelsen, Bedrag) where confrontations turn moralistic
- ▸In Danish family arguments when someone is being preachy
- ▸In Danish workplace conflict around perceived hypocrisy
- ▸In Danish social-media threads calling out performative outrage
- ▸In Danish standup mocking holier-than-thou behaviour