German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday warned that up to 70% of the country’s population — some 58 million people — could contract the coronavirus.

No doubt the country is now under a full hamsterkauf.

“Hamsterkauf” in the German language means “panic buying.” The word comes from “hamstern” (hoarding) and “kaufen,” (to buy).

German publication The Local says, “this word has also been used to describe the rush on supermarkets that occurs before long holiday weekends when supermarkets will be closed and, as many of us living in Germany know, every Saturday night before supermarkets shut their doors on Sunday.  This word is most commonly used with the verb ‘machen,’ as in the phrase Hamsterkäufe machen bei Knappheit, ‘to panic buy.’”

“It’s not too hard for people from the English-speaking world to guess its meaning,” DW.com reported. “After all, they share the same word for the rodent that’s used as a descriptive term in German to indicate that if you do a hamsterkauf, you want a lot of stuff — just as hamsters are eager to store as much food as they can in their cheeks. You never know, it could come in handy.”

The website is making a case for adding the word to the American lexicon.

Panic buying is perhaps part of the German angst that crops up once in a while. The question is: If angst made it into the English language long ago, isn’t it time for hamsterkauf to follow suit and join the likes of dachshund, blitzkrieg, kindergarten, realpolitik and hinterland? Probably not, as compound words stand a far lower chance of ever being incorporated, but never say die in this crazy lexiconic world.

Be that as it may, there’s no denying the fact that a number of English-language publications have explicitly mentioned and explained the German expression for hoarding as they seem to like it quite a bit.

So we say about “hamsterkauf” — learn it, know it, use it. Just stop doing it!

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