Zeitgeist (German pronunciation: [ˈtsaɪtɡaɪst] ( listen)) is "the spirit of the times" or "the spirit of the age." [1] Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era.
The term is a loanword from German Zeit – "time" (cognate with English "tide" and "time") and Geist – "spirit" (cognate with English "ghost").
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The concept of Zeitgeist goes back to Johann Gottfried Herder and other German Romanticists, such as Cornelius Jagdmann, but is best known in relation to Hegel's philosophy of history. In 1769 Herder wrote a critique of the work Genius seculi by the philologist Christian Adolph Klotz and introduced the word Zeitgeist into German as a translation of genius seculi (Latin: genius - "guardian spirit" and saeculi - "of the age").
The Guardian.co.uk and Instructables.com have features showing popular and trending news, topics, and articles, called Zeitgeist.[2]
Google releases categorized lists of the most searched keywords annually called "Google Zeitgeist".[3][4]
American alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins had produced an album which they titled Zeitgeist.
The Unity in Ubuntu, GNOME 3.x and many other Linux/BSD based operating systems use a logging application named the "zeitgeist-daemon". It logs recently opened and most used documents, applications and many other things, but it can be easily disabled or removed.