Muskelkater

Are you sore from your big workout yesterday? In German you would say you've got Muskelkater. "Muskel," as you might have guessed, is the word for muscle. "Kater" is a bit more ambiguous: it can mean both a male cat and a hangover. The first combination doesn't seem to make any sense at all, especially considering that a cat's favorite activity -- namely, sunbathing -- requires zero muscle exertion. A "muscle hangover" also doesn't seem to fit the bill, since it's definitely not fair to mix up bad (alcohol) and good (exercise) excesses. In any case, some say that it's most likely that "Kater" has nothing to do with cats or hangovers, but that it's derived from the medical term "catarrh," which refers to the inflammation of a mucuous membrane. The Muskelkater is, then, the inflammation of a muscle, rather than of a mucous membrane. Seems like coffee and aspirin aren't the best remedy for sore muscles after all.