ta kål på

Ordhistoria och etymologi

Literally, “take cabbage on”, associated with chopping of cabbage. May be of Finnish origin (compare kola vippen). Related to Danish gøre kål på (“destroy, kill”), Norwegian Bokmål gjøre kål på and Norwegian Nynorsk gjera kål på (“destroy, finish off”), both said to be originally in sense of making cabbage soup of something, and have been attested with Danish af or Norwegian av instead of på. In this case, ta kål på may be etymologically unrelated to kola vippen. The Swedish Academical Dictionary does also compares it to Swedish hacka kål av (“chop cabbage of”), with same sense. Similar phrases are also found in other languages, like Russian.