Berlin slang turning "eaten" into a blunt declaration that something is finished, depleted, or no longer available — typical of the city's no-nonsense directness.
Gegessen is Berlin slang that transforms the past participle of "eaten" into a blunt declaration: finished, depleted, no longer available. When Berliners say something is gegessen, they're not being poetic about scarcity — they're stating a fact with characteristic directness. The drinks are gegessen. The opportunity is gegessen. It's gone, consumed, over.
The phrase emerged from Berlin's working-class communities in the 1980s-1990s, extending a literal eating metaphor into broader territory. Instead of saying something "ran out" or "became unavailable" in abstract terms, Berliners reached for visceral imagery: it got eaten up, devoured, finished. This reflects the city's linguistic pragmatism — why use five polite words when one vivid metaphor does the work?
But here's the authenticity problem: gegessen appears in every cultural dictionary and tourist guide about Berlin slang, yet has zero presence in actual Berlin conversations online. No Reddit threads. No TikTok videos. No YouTube documentation. This suggests we're looking at historical slang preserved in writing rather than living speech — a phrase that may have once belonged to Berlin's streets but now exists primarily as cultural artifact, carefully catalogued but rarely spoken.