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angst

noun
/ˈæŋ(k)st//ˈeɪ̯ŋ(k)st/CA

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.

  1. derived from *angustiz✻
  2. derived from angust
  3. derived from angest
  4. borrowed from angst
  5. borrowed from Angst

Definitions

  1. Emotional turmoil

    Emotional turmoil; painful sadness; anguish.

    • 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.
    • 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,…

    A feeling of acute but vague anxiety or apprehension often accompanied by depression, especially philosophical anxiety.

  3. Fiction focusing on characters experiencing strong emotions and conflicts with other…

    Fiction focusing on characters experiencing strong emotions and conflicts with other characters.

    • General: a story with a general theme. It is neither romance or angst but may incorporate elements of all other genres.
    • Fans prefer fluff to other types of fic. But angst (dramatic stories where characters have a wide range of emotions, including ... angsty ones) comes in a close second.
  4. ›+ 1 more definition

    1. To suffer angst

      To suffer angst; to fret.

      • In the second scene, the camera switches to the father listening, angsting, dying inside, but saying nothing.
      • 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?

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for angst. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA