The noun form for the adjective happy is happiness. German Words that Express Concepts for which English Lacks Suitable Words. So it literally means “a unit of petting.”. Many online dictionaries translate this word to be a noun for “caress,” but when you break down the word, it sounds quite technical. German words for sad include traurig, bedauerlich, unglücklich, trist, schlimm, schmerzlich and betrüblich. A word that means the same as happy? Froebel was a 19th-century educator in Germany and something of … Cheerful is another word for happy. The German word means, literally, “children’s garden,” and it was an invention of Friedrich Froebel, a German educator. Find more German words at wordhippo.com! Some German nouns have naturalized so well that we hardly think of them as foreigners. Kindergarten is one such word. The word comes from the verb streicheln— to stroke or pet — and the noun Einheit— a unit of measurement. pick up a thesaurus and look for happy. There is now an excellent Wikipedia article with a List of German expressions in English, so I will no longer be making additions to this page. Please do, however, use the Contact/Feedback link below to send (a) corrections, or (b) fun quotations illustrating the use of one of the words listed below in English.