angst
[ahngkst, angst]
- a feeling of dread, anxiety, or anguish.
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Origin of angst
1840–50; < German Angst fear, anxiety, Old High German angust (cognate with Middle Low German angest, Middle Dutch anxt), equivalent to ang- (akin to eng narrow, constricted) + -st abstract nominal suffix, perhaps a conglomerate of a suffix *-os- + *-ti- suffix forming abstracts
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Related Words
nervousness, apprehension, agony, misgiving, uneasiness, dread, blues, depression, WeltschmerzExamples from the Web for angst
Contemporary Examples
Heightening his angst, Warren pines for precocious Jessica (Gevinson).
Even before that ode to Jewish angst and masturbation hit the bookstores in 1969, Roth was a Yaddo veteran.
And I admit I look back on my teenage self and think a lot of my angst sounds like an Onion article.
She felt claustrophobic, entrapped like an exotic bird, but despite her angst she lacked the courage to leave.
Rita Moreno, SAG Life Achievement Award Winner, Talks Brando, Elvis And West Side StorySandra McElwaine
January 15, 2014
And there must also be angst in Washington, which has, since 2003, relied on the Chinese to rein in their troublesome ally for us.
angst
- an acute but nonspecific sense of anxiety or remorse
- (in Existentialist philosophy) the dread caused by man's awareness that his future is not determined but must be freely chosen
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Word Origin
German
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Word Origin and History for angst
n.
1944, from German Angst "neurotic fear, anxiety, guilt, remorse," from Old High German angust, from the root of anger. George Eliot used it (in German) in 1849, and it was popularized in English by translation of Freud's work, but as a foreign word until 1940s. Old English had a cognate word, angsumnes "anxiety," but it died out.
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
angst
[(ahngkst)]
A kind of fear or anxiety; Angst is German for “fear.” It is usually applied to a deep and essentially philosophical anxiety about the world in general or personal freedom. (See existentialism.)
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The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.