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völkisch. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
völkisch, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
völkisch in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
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English
Etymology
From German völkisch. (Morphologically, compare English folkish.)
Adjective
völkisch
- Pertaining to a German populist, identity-nationalist or ethnonationalist ideology found since the late 19th century.
2023 June 26, Kate Connolly, “Far-right AfD wins local election in ‘watershed moment’ for German politics”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:It is led by Björn Höcke, who is considered to be part of the AfD’s far right or völkisch wing, which was officially disbanded but is still widely believed to exist.
German
Etymology
Volk + -isch (initially sometimes spelled without an umlaut, as volkisch and e.g. volckisch),[1] initially as a translation of Latin popularis[2] and then of French national/New Latin nationalis. Morphologically, compare English folkish, Old English folcisc.
Pronunciation
Adjective
völkisch (strong nominative masculine singular völkischer, comparative völkischer, superlative am völkischsten)
- (rare, now dated, relational) pertaining to a people
- (dated) national
- Synonym: national (see also staatlich, innerstaatlich)
- (dated, especially in white supremacy and Nazism) ethnic, pertaining to a people (especially the German people) as a (putative) race (compare ethnisch)
- (by extension) populist, nationalist, ethnonationalist
Usage notes
The word often has a negative connotation now because of its propaganda usage in Nazi Germany, in which the meaning shifted from earlier “national” to “ethnic”.
Declension
Positive forms of völkisch
Comparative forms of völkisch
Superlative forms of völkisch
Derived terms
References
- ^ Attested with an umlaut since at least 1812 in Bragur, and also used in an 1811 letter by Fichte printed in Johann Gottlieb Fichte's Leben und literarischer Briefwechsel (1862).
- ^ E.g. (as volckisch) in Lorenz Diefenbach's 1857 Glossarium Latino-Germanicum mediae et infimae aetatis.
Further reading