angst

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See also: Angst

English

WOTD – 21 June 2012

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.

Pronunciation

  • enPR: ăng(k)st, IPA(key): /æŋ(k)st/
  • Audio (CA synth)(file)
  • Audio (AU)(file)
  • Audio (Northern US)(file)
  • Rhymes: -æŋkst

Noun

angst (uncountable)

  1. Emotional turmoil; painful sadness.
    • 1979, Peter Hammill, Mirror images:
      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.
    • 2007, Martyn Bone, Perspectives on Barry Hannah, page 3:
      Harry's adolescence is theatrical and gaudy, and many of its key scenes have a lurid and camp quality that is appropriate to the exaggerated mood-shifting and self-dramatizing of teen angst.
  2. A feeling of acute but vague anxiety or apprehension often accompanied by depression, especially philosophical anxiety.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

angst (third-person singular simple present angsts, present participle angsting, simple past and past participle angsted)

  1. (informal, intransitive) To suffer angst; to fret.
    • 2001, Joseph P Natoli, Postmodern Journeys: Film and Culture, 1996-1998:
      In the second scene, the camera switches to the father listening, angsting, dying inside, but saying nothing.
    • 2006, Liz Ireland, Three Bedrooms in Chelsea:
      She'd never angsted so much about her head as she had in the past twenty-four hours. Why the hell hadn't she just left it alone?

References

  1. ^ “angst”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
  2. ^ “angst”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
  3. ^ Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “angst”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.

Anagrams

Danish

Etymology

From Middle High German angest, from Old High German angust, from Proto-Germanic *angustiz.

Adjective

angst

  1. afraid, anxious, alarmed

Noun

angst c (singular definite angsten, not used in plural form)

  1. fear, anxiety, alarm, apprehension, dread
  2. angst

Dutch

Etymology

From Middle Dutch anxt, from Old Dutch *angust, from Proto-Germanic *angustiz, an abstract noun derived from the adjective *angu-. Similar abstract noun derivations from an adjective are dienst and ernst. Cognates include Middle Low German angest, Old High German angust, Middle High German angest, German Angst, Old Frisian ongosta, West Frisian eangst. See also eng.

Pronunciation

Noun

angst m (plural angsten, diminutive angstje n)

  1. fear, fright, anxiety
    Synonyms: huiver, schrik, vrees, vrucht

Derived terms

Related terms

Descendants

  • Afrikaans: angs

Anagrams

Norwegian Bokmål

Norwegian Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia no

Etymology

From Middle Low German (compare German Angst).

Noun

angst m (definite singular angsten, uncountable)

  1. angst, anxiety

Derived terms

References

“angst” in The Bokmål Dictionary.

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