German loan words

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There are a number of German terms for which there are no useful English equivalents. Because of their usefulness, these terms -- called loan words -- have entered the English lexicon.

This list (with nearest synonyms) includes:

  • Achtung (attention)
  • Aha-Erlebnis/Aha-Effekt (autodidactic discovery)
  • Angst (a feeling of anxiety, apprehension, or insecurity)
  • Ansatz (one of the most used German loan words in the English-speaking world of science)
  • Blitz ("lightning", came to be known as a metaphor for "extremely fast"/a explicably fast maneuver or movement.)
  • Blitzkrieg (lightning war)
  • Bratwurst (sausage)
  • Doppelgänger (a ghostly counterpart of a living person)
  • Drachenfutter (a gift brought home by a carousing husband to placate his wife, literally "dragon fodder")
  • Ersatz (being a usually artificial and inferior substitute or imitation)
  • Festschrift (a volume of writings by different authors presented as a tribute or memorial especially to a scholar)
  • Gastarbeiter (guest worker)
  • Gemütlich (warmth,agreeably pleasant), Gemütlichkeit (cordiality, friendliness)
  • Gesamtkunstwerk (comprehensive work)
  • Gestalt (epiphany, a structure, configuration, or pattern of physical, biological, or psychological phenomena so integrated as to constitute a functional unit with properties not derivable by summation of its parts)
  • Götterdämmerung (literally - twilight of the gods; a collapse (as of a society or regime) marked by catastrophic violence and disorder)
  • Hausfrau (housewife)
  • Kaffeeklatsch (an informal social gathering for coffee and conversation)
  • Kindergarten (nursery, lit. Garden of children -- This is probably the best known German word in the whole wide world.)
  • Lebensraum (space required for life, growth, or activity, compare to Elbow room, Living-room')
  • Loanword (a word taken into another language; ironically a Loanword, a calque of the German Lehnwort)
  • Leitmotiv (a dominant recurring theme)
  • Lust (extreme wanting, desire; from Old English term, meaning "desire"; ultimately from a Germanic word which came from High German lust "wish, desire". In German, the word lust denotes simply "desire")
  • Meister ((master/teacher, Ex. Mr.; compare to Maestro) -- See also the words from Todesfuge: "Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland" by Paul Celan)
  • Mittelschmerz (middle pain, used to refer to ovulation pain)
  • Ostalgie (nostalgia for the former Eastern Bloc)
  • Ohrwurm (a catchy tune that gets stuck in one's head)
  • Poltergeist (a noisy usually mischievous ghost held to be responsible for unexplained noises)
  • Putsch (revolution; a secretly plotted and suddenly executed attempt to overthrow a government)
  • Realpolitik (politics based on practical and material factors rather than on theoretical or ethical objectives)
  • Sauerkraut (sour cabbage)
  • Schadenfreude (sadism, enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others)
  • Sturm und Drang (lit. "storm and stress"; turmoil)
  • Über (ultra, "very"), Übermensch (superman/superhuman)
  • Überfremdung claim that some aspect of a culture has been tooheavily penetrated by foreign influence
  • Ursprache (proto-language)
  • Waldsterben (deforestation)
  • Wanderlust (strong longing for or impulse toward wandering)
  • Weltanschauung (a comprehensive conception or apprehension of the world especially from a specific standpoint)
  • Weltschmerz (lit. "world-pain"; mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state of the world with an ideal state)
  • Wirtschaftswunder (designates the upturn experienced in the West German and Austrian economies after the Second World War)
  • Wunderkind (a child prodigy)
  • Zeitgeist ("spirit of the times"; actually a German calque originating from a Shakespeare translation)
See also
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