Fika is a Swedish verb that roughly means "to take a coffee break".
Fika is a social institution in Sweden: it means taking a break from work or other activities and having a coffee with one's colleagues, friends, date, or family. The word has quite ambiguous connotations, and can at its its extremes denote a date or a small meal with your boss. This practice of taking a break for a coffee and a light snack (some biscuits, cookies, or a sandwich) between more substantial meals like lunch and dinner is central to Swedish life, Swedes being among the heaviest consumers of coffee in the world.[1]
Since the word implies drinking coffee, just having a sandwich would not really be fika, although these days tea or a soft drink instead of coffee is becoming more frequent. In recent years, too, fika has also come to mean simply going to a café and having a coffee with someone, though this technically deviates from the strict "taking a break" meaning.[citation needed] The word is an example of the backslang used in the 19th century – where the syllables of a word are reversed – deriving from kaffi, an earlier variant of the Swedish word kaffe ("coffee").[citation needed] The word is also used as a noun, meaning the actual event of having a fika, i.e., "a lovely fika." From fika also comes the word fik (a colloquial term for "café") through a process of back-formation. In northern Sweden and some of the more rural areas, fika is synonymous to coffee without any treats: Ta en kopp fika ("Have a cup of coffee").[
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