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# Pohoda
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/article-2116jsp/
- Published: 2004-09-01T23:09:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-04-17T11:52:46.000Z
- Author: David Short
- Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 19:17, #ImagesUploaded

![Prague during springtime](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3f/80/3f804bea-4b2d-4ddf-9ff0-6ec7d0afa5fa/content/images/2026/04/springprague_0jMPHdV-1776425901420.jpg)

Prague during springtime

The Czech word *pohoda* can keep a translator awake at night. Along with its derivatives *pohodový* and *pohodovì* it has irritated me for about [twenty years](http://www.ssees.ac.uk/dslist.doc?ref=opendemocracy.net). It is not that it is in the strictest terms “untranslatable”, but that it has expanded rapidly to cover a range of meanings requiring different translations in English, while evidently remaining one and the same word to the Czechs themselves.

Until that twenty-year old epiphany I had barely heard it. I knew it from literature and it was in standard monolingual dictionaries but as a bookish expression it stayed on the edge of my awareness. Since then, its meaning has ballooned from denoting primarily “pleasant weather” or a “pleasant atmosphere” - and metaphorically an agreeable state of mind and/or body, well-being - to a colloquialism conveying all manner of pleasant, desirable, suitable, or simply good states of affairs.

While its pleasure seems to have flourished for the Czechs, it has caused my translatorly [satisfaction](http://www.bcsa.co.uk/specials.html?ref=opendemocracy.net) to dwindle.

*Pohoda’s* primary 20th century sense has generally carried the superfluous automatic epithet *pøíjemná* (pleasant) or, often, *krásná* (beautiful) unless it is qualified by some other adjective, such as *jarní* (spring). There is no direct, one-to-one English equivalent. In the common metaphorical sense the word indicates a range of possible translations; many of these carry an atmosphere of interiority, suggesting that the addition of the adjective *duševní* (mental, of the soul) might also be superfluous, though the phrase *duševní* *pohoda* does have an ideal equivalent in “peace of mind” (already, then, miles away from pleasant weather).

The utterance *To je pohoda* once equated to (crudely) “What lovely weather” or “What a lovely day”, but today it may be used of almost any situation or place that evokes the same sense of pleasure that such a day or weather might. In its most up-to-date sense it conveys an assurance that things are either ideal or couldn’t be better (“That’s great”, “Everything’s fine”). The same is true of the expression *To je v pohodì*, which comes closer to “It’s okay”, “Don’t worry”, “No problem”, not to mention – for its truncated form *V pohodì* – my least favourite English response, “Sorted!” (where has the weather gone now?).

In fact, *V pohodì*, as used by media folk (and those who would imitate them), may mean little more than “yes”, “great”, “excellent”, “obviously”, “you’re welcome”; its inglorious blossoming (along with *pohoda* itself, and *pohodový*) since November 1989 has not escaped the murderously aquiline eye of Vladimír Just, who in his *Slovník floskulí* ([Prague, 2003](http://www.kosmas.cz/knihy/108435/Slovnik%5Ffloskuli/?ref=opendemocracy.net)), lambasts all the worst excesses of latterday Czech political and journalistic newspeak.

The inflation of the word’s meaning is further reflected in the adjective pohodový and the adverb *pohodovì*, which appear in a [dictionary](http://www.kosmas.cz/knihy/5538/Nova%5Fslova%5Fv%5Fcestine%5F-%5FSlovnik%5Fneologizmu%5F2/kolektiv%5FOlga%5FMartincova/?ref=opendemocracy.net) of recent Czech neologisms by Olga Martincová and others.

[Josef Fronek](http://www.radio.cz/en/article/54894?ref=opendemocracy.net) has made an admirable attempt to capture the range of meanings of *pohodový*; his own Czech-English dictionary entry offers in the first sense: “pleasant, lovely, enjoyable, \[slang\] swell, super”, and in the second: “(of a person) level-headed, calm, unruffled, \[colloquial\] unflappable, cool”. At which point it becomes clear that perhaps “cool” - in its modern sense, covering a wide range of things, persons and situations - is the nearest single equivalent for *pohodový*.

“Cool” itself, like *pohoda* if not so intimately, is a word widely associated with weather conditions. (This also makes the recent widespread slang intrusion of *cool* into teenage Czech thoroughly redundant. Similar meteorological associations may also attach to the English “fine”, though not to the long-established Czech *fajn*.) For *pohodovì*, Olga Martincová offers meanings translatable as “pleasantly, unhurriedly, calmly”, while Fronek offers “calmly, unhurriedly”.

Meanwhile, this linguistic flux has created a *pohoda*\-related oddity. The Czech language makes available the negative prefix *ne*\- for verbs, adjectives and nouns \[hence *dìlat/nedìlat* (do/not do), *zajímavý/nezajímavý* (interesting/uninteresting)\]. But the analogous form to *pohoda – nepohoda* \- merely means “bad weather”; it has been stranded as a purely lexical negative, totally untouched by all that has happened to its non-negative sister.

For [English-Czech](http://www.teachyourself.co.uk/lczech.htm?ref=opendemocracy.net) dictionaries it is hard to see how the frequency and prolificity of *pohoda* or variations of it might be truly conveyed. My own calm escapes me.