In modern German, Ungeziefer means vermin — the catch-all for cockroaches, silverfish, bedbugs, the crawling presence you want out of your home. A box of traps in any German drugstore carries the word: Ungeziefer- und Silberfischchen-Falle. It signals nuisance, infestation, disgust.
But the word carries a deeper shadow. Its root in Old High German, unzibar, meant “unfit for sacrifice.” Animals that could not be offered to God were cast outside the realm of purity. Over centuries, the term lost its ritual meaning but kept its tone of exclusion: creatures that should not exist in proximity to humans, language, or the sacred.
Kafka chose Ungeziefer deliberately in the opening line of The Metamorphosis. Not Käfer (beetle), not Insekt, not any species. He wanted a word that rejects precision and slides into loathing. A body unnamed, but immediately abjected.
