kåk

Inherited from Old Swedish kaker, from Middle Low German kāk, a form of “pillory”, a pole where different punishments were carried out, probably ultimately from the root of kägla (“pin, cone”).^[1] Old Swedish kaker, also denoted the foundation of the pole, usually a raised platform, which also appears to have functioned as a form of “jail”, a synonym being stupa (compare Old Swedish stupo stokker, Swedish stupstock, “chopping block”); Ydre's “stupa” being described as “a square log construction of 3–4 logs above the ground, without a stone base, fireplace or windows, but with an opening on one side through which the prisoner must crawl in”.^[2] With this, kåk became a word for jail and later prison, as well as a figurative term for a poor wooden house or shack.

Cognates includes Old Danish kagher, Danish kag, found in the 13th century Scanian Bjarkey laws, in the punishment springa aff kaghen (“run off the pillory”), were the convict “be put on the pillory and self run down”.^[2] This form is also recorded as a medieval name for the k-rune ᚴ, recorded by Olaus Petri (1493–1552) as the definitive form kaguen, and by Johannes Bureus (1568–1652) as kaghen.

• IPA^(key): /koːk/

kåk c

2. a (wooden) house in poor condition, a shack, a ramshackle house
3. (somewhat colloquial, by extension) a house (generally)

   köpa ny kåk

   buy a new house

4. (slang, chiefly in the definite) a prison

   Han sitter på kåken

   He's in prison

5. (poker) full house, a combination of a pair and three-of-a-kind
6. (chiefly in the definite) (Runic alphabet) name of the rune ᚴ (k), as an archaism (modernization of the medieval form kaghen)

Might be losing (sense 1) outside compounds like kåkstad, but generally known in other senses.

• kåkstad

• kåk in Svensk ordbok.
• kåk in Elof Hellquist, Svensk etymologisk ordbok (1st ed., 1922)
• kåk in Project Runeberg

kåk m

1. uncle

• “kåk” in Welsh Romani-English Dictionary, ROMLEX – the Romani Lexicon Project, 2000.