• Angst

    Pronunciation

    • Canada IPA: /æŋ(k)st/
    • Canada IPA: /eɪŋ(k)st/
    • Rhymes: -æŋkst

    Origin

    From the German word Angst or the Danish word angst; attested since the 19th century in English translations of the works of Freud and Søren Kierkegaard. (George Eliot used the phrase complete with definite article: "die Angst".) Initially capitalized (as in German and contemporaneous Danish), the term first began to be written with a lowercase "a" around 1940–44.

    Merriam Webster Online|angst

    Dictionary.com|angst

    Online Etymology Dictionary, "angst"

    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.

    Full definition of angst

    Noun

    angst

    (uncountable)
    1. Emotional turmoil; painful sadness.
      • 1979, Peter Hammill, Mirror imagesI'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.

    Verb

    1. (informal) To suffer angst; to fret.
      • 2001, Joseph P Natoli, Postmodern Journeys: Film and Culture, 1996-1998In the second scene, the camera switches to the father listening, angsting, dying inside, but saying nothing.
      • 2006, Liz Ireland, Three Bedrooms in ChelseaShe'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?
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