Friday, March 10, 2006

weltschmerz

I just discovered this word and I love it. I intend to drop it into converstations, no matter how pretentious people think I sound.

weltschmerz (VELT-shmerts) noun

World weariness; pessimism, apathy, or sadness felt at the difference between physical reality and the ideal state.

[From German Weltschmerz, from Welt (world) + Schmerz (pain).]


It makes me want to move to Germany.

posted by secret wombat at 1:59 pm

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yes! This is one of the reasons why I love Germans and Germany. They contemplate and give weight to concepts by conflating words like that, making unique terms in the process. Weltenschaung, Zeitgeist, etc.

Just the other day I was wondering if they have one for the 'desire for war brought on by a bored dissatisfaction with the routine predictability of peacetime life'.

I also like their colloquial word for an annoying person, 'arschgeige', literally 'arse-violin'. Dunno what the heck concept that's really supposed to convey.

But is funny, JA!

1:54 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Perhaps the German 'arse-violin' comes from a WWII cross fertilization with the American vernacular term 'pucker string', a sort of abstract anatomical structure that gives one the ability to control what comes out of their butt-- basically a sphincter, but with a more musical connotation.

Play on maestro...

G.

2:07 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

that should be "...what comes out of HIS butt...", I suppose

2:13 pm  

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