The Word from the Official ABBA site

Posted by Word Camel on August 13, 2002

In Reply to: Dig in the Dancing Queen??? posted by Elena on August 12, 2002

: Could anybody help me, a mere Russian female who wants to find out the strict meaning of the famous phrase "DIG IN the Dancing Queen" (by ABBA)?
: "See that girl, watch the scene, dig in the Dancing Queen"

: As I found out "to dig in" can mean "to start eating or eat heartily". I can not understand.

: Help me please!!

This is turning out to be a lesson in the ambiguitiy of translation in general.

Unofficially - because the forum is the best I could do, the word is it's definitely 'dig in' but no one really knows why. The most intriguing theory is that it's a direct translation of a Swedish phrase that ABBA decided to keep in spite of the fact that it was slightly awkward in English. They liked the way "dig in" resembled the English "diggin'".

We are still awaiting the comments of the Swedes as to whether this is really plausible. The Finnish poster seemed to think so, but Finnish is so different to other Scandinavian languages I doubt he's basing his opinion on linguistics.

Detective Camel