The word is pendeln. This word is interesting as it sort of has a double meaning, both of which are quite useful. I stumbled across this word whilst reading an article for class at Goethe Freiburg. We were talking about people who must commute from one city to another city, and most of the time stay in their “working” city between Monday and Friday and only see their family on the weekend.

So what does this word mean then? It has two contexts which mean, to go back and forth. For example, a pendulum will swing back and forth so one can use it as such: Der Pendler pendelt. The other context is with people as is described above, given the context one can create a sentenct: Er muss zwischen Köln und Berlin pendeln.

There you have it we humans can also “pendeln”, which means a person who “pendeln”  can also be called a pendulum or ein Pendler.