zeitgeist
Pluralzeitgeists, zeitgeister
- 1The spirit of an age: the tastes, outlook, and mood characteristic of a particular period.
The band's first album captured the zeitgeist of a restless, hopeful decade.
Advertisers spend fortunes trying to read the zeitgeist before their competitors do.
Similarspirit, mood, ethos, climate
Note
English took the German word unchanged, literally "spirit of the age", and usually drops its German capital. The zeitgeist is something a writer or a vote catches, captures or reflects, as when Robert Heinlein's gift was said to be catching it. The plural still shows the borrowing: zeitgeists is the plain form, while zeitgeister and the rare zeitgeisten keep German endings.
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Origin
Borrowed unchanged from German Zeitgeist (literally "spirit of the age").