Doh

This story's only going to make sense if you can read a little German...

There's a word that's new to me that keeps cropping up in Harry Potter und der Feuerkelch: "söben."

Often when I'm reading, I gloss over words I don't know, especially if I understand most of the surrounding text. If I'm lucky, I can accurately figure out the meaning of a new word from context, as with "Verteidigung" in "Verteidigung gegen die dunklen Kuenste" (defense against the dark arts). But not so with "söben," and it really occurs all over the place. So I looked it up in my little Collins Gem German-English Dictionary.

"I don't understand how I could have gotten by all these years without ever having heard the word söben," I told Stefan.

"Söben?" he said, "I don't know that word."

"But it's all over the place in Harry Potter und der Feuerkelch. Söben."

He looked dubious. "Are you sure? How do you spell it?"

"Tsk, of course I'm sure. It's spelled s-o-e-b-e-n: söben."

"Söben? No, there's no such word in German."

"It's in my dictionary!" I insisted. "It means 'just now.' S-o-e-b-e-n."

Stefan pondered a moment--"S-o-e-b-e-n, s-o-e-b-e-n..."--then laughed. "Oh, you mean so-eben!"

Doh. I know the word soeben. And I had wondered why the typesetters had gone for the oe instead of an ö. Three cheers for another compound word!