Spießer

What it means

1. 1.

   A narrow-minded conformist: hedge trimmed to the millimetre, opinions borrowed from the regional paper, deep suspicion of anything unfamiliar. One of the most-used German insults that is not remotely rude.

2. 2.

   The adjective spießig extends to things — a spießige Hochzeit, a spießiges Wohnzimmer — meaning stuffily conventional.

Examples with translations

• Sei nicht so ein Spießer, komm einfach mit.

  Don't be such a stick in the mud, just come along.

• Das Viertel ist mir zu spießig geworden.

  The neighbourhood has got too suburban for me.

Where it comes from

Shortened from Spießbürger, literally 'pike citizen' — the medieval townsman who turned out for militia duty with a Spieß. Nineteenth-century writers, Romantics especially, turned the term into a byword for philistine small-mindedness, and that is the sense that survives.

First attested: 19th century in this sense

Other forms

Similar terms:

Kleinbürger, Philister