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What does “lyckas” mean in Swedish?

Lyckas means “to succeed” or “to manage to do something.” The odd part: it ends in -s, the same ending Swedish puts on passive verbs (“is done to”). But here the -s does nothing — lyckas is just how the word looks, even when you’re the one doing it. The speaker uses it twice fast: “Jag lyckades absolut inte” (I absolutely did not succeed) and “Jag lyckades bara få min tröja blöt” (I only managed to get my shirt wet).

There’s no shorter version: you can’t drop the -s and say “lycka” to mean “succeed” — the word is just lyckas. It’s followed by a plain verb: lyckas göra (“manage to do”), lyckas slå (“manage to beat”). Past tense is lyckades, and “have succeeded” is har lyckats. Nice memory hook: the noun lycka means “happiness” or “luck,” so lyckas feels like “to get lucky enough to pull it off.”