kjører

Kjører is the present tense form of the Norwegian verb å kjøre, used in Bokmål to mean driving or operating a vehicle or machine. It can also refer to running or operating something such as a program or service. In everyday usage, you might say “Han kjører bilen til jobben” (He drives the car to work) or “Vi kjører mot fjellet” (We are driving toward the mountain).

Etymology and cognates: The Norwegian kjøre is related to Danish køre and Swedish köra, all tracing back to Old Norse keyra. In Nynorsk, the corresponding present tense is køyrer, and the infinitive is køyre, reflecting orthographic and phonetic differences between written standards.

Conjugation and forms: The infinitive is å kjøre. Present tense forms include jeg kjører, du kjører, han/hun/det kjører, vi kjører, dere kjører, de kjører. The past tense is kjørte, the past participle kjørt, and the present participle kjørende. Dialectal and stylistic variations may affect pronunciation and spelling, but the basic paradigm is shared with related Scandinavian languages.

Usage notes: Beyond driving a car, kjøre appears in contexts such as operating machinery, issuing a command, or describing software that is running—for example, “programmet kjører” means the program is currently running. In informal speech, imperative forms like kjør are used to tell someone to drive or operate something. In Nynorsk, the corresponding form is køyrer.