tätt

Tätt is a Swedish word that functions as both an adjective and an adverb, meaning close together or densely packed. It describes things that are physically near each other, or events and objects that occur with little space or time between them. In use, it can refer to spatial closeness, such as houses standing tätt, or to temporal proximity, as in events following tätt efter varandra.

As an adjective, tät forms the base meaning of “dense” or “thick” and appears in compounds describing population density or built-up areas, such as tätbefolkad or tätort, the latter being a standard term in Swedish statistics for an urban area. The adverbial form tätt is common in everyday language, and it is used with verbs to express closeness or quick succession, for example “husen står tätt” or “tåget gick tätt efter mitt.”

Etymology traces tätt to tät, a Swedish word meaning dense or tight, with cognates in other Scandinavian languages, such as Norwegian tett and Danish tæt. The forms are related and carry a similar meaning of closeness or concentration in space or time.

In modern Swedish, tätt is a frequent descriptive tool in everyday speech as well as in geography, urban planning, and statistics, where it helps distinguish densely built or densely populated areas from more spread-out ones. Its antonym is ofta glest, meaning sparsely or thinly spread.