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Angst
Definitions
- 1 Emotional turmoil; painful sadness; anguish. uncountable
"I've begun to regret that we'd ever met / Between the dimensions. / It gets such a strain to pretend that the change / Is anything but cheap. / With your infant pique and your angst pretensions / Sometimes you act like such a creep."
- 2 an acute but unspecific feeling of anxiety; usually reserved for philosophical anxiety about the world or about personal freedom wordnet
- 3 A feeling of acute but vague anxiety or apprehension often accompanied by depression, especially philosophical anxiety. uncountable
- 4 Fiction focusing on characters experiencing strong emotions and conflicts with other characters. uncountable
"General: a story with a general theme. It is neither romance or angst but may incorporate elements of all other genres."
- 1 To suffer angst; to fret. informal, intransitive
"In the second scene, the camera switches to the father listening, angsting, dying inside, but saying nothing."
Etymology
Borrowed from German Angst or Danish angst; attested since the 19th century in English translations of the works of Søren Kierkegaard. Initially capitalized (as in German and contemporaneous Danish), the term first began to be written with a lowercase "a" around 1940–44. The German and Danish terms both derive from Middle High German angest, from Old High German angust, from Proto-Germanic *angustiz; Dutch angst is cognate. Compare Swedish ångest.
Borrowed from German Angst or Danish angst; attested since the 19th century in English translations of the works of Søren Kierkegaard. Initially capitalized (as in German and contemporaneous Danish), the term first began to be written with a lowercase "a" around 1940–44. The German and Danish terms both derive from Middle High German angest, from Old High German angust, from Proto-Germanic *angustiz; Dutch angst is cognate. Compare Swedish ångest.
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