gestern
German, adverb
gestern is spelled G-E-S-T-E-R-N (7 letters) and appears 141 times per million words in written German, the 622nd most frequent German word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). Gestern is a German adverb meaning “yesterday” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). With a capital, Gestern is a different word: “yesterday (the recent past)”. The German Wiktionary defines it as “am Tag unmittelbar vor dem heutigen Tag”.
What does gestern mean in English?
adverb
- 1
yesterday
noun
- 1
neuteryesterday (the recent past)
Source: English Wiktionary, German section, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0).
How German dictionaries define it
adverb: 1. am Tag unmittelbar vor dem heutigen Tag 2. vor (nicht allzu) langer Zeit
noun: 1. die Vergangenheit
The definition in the German Wiktionary, in German.
Source: German Wiktionary, dump of September 1, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org.
English words that translate to gestern
Source: the translation tables of the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026.
How common is gestern in German?
gestern appears 141 times per million words in written German.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).