Germanism

American  

[jur-muh-niz-uhm] / ˈdʒɜr məˌnɪz əm /

noun

1. a usage, idiom, or other feature that is characteristic of the German language.

2. a custom, manner, mode of thought, action, etc., that is characteristic of the German people.

3. extreme partiality for or attachment to Germany, Germans, or German customs, manners, etc.

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Germanism British  

/ ˈdʒɜːməˌnɪzəm /

noun

1. a word or idiom borrowed from or modelled on German

2. a German custom, trait, practice, etc

3. attachment to or high regard for German customs, institutions, etc

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Other Word Forms

• anti-Germanism
  noun
• pro-Germanism
  noun

Etymology

Origin of Germanism

First recorded in 1605–15; German + -ism

Example Sentences

The story is most memorable in the passages where Germanism is horribly mocked by events, as Plievier evokes those last, insane days when thoroughness turned into madness, tables of organization into the outlines of farce.

From Time Magazine Archive

In a series of Advent sermons that packed St. Michael's Church he condemned the false choice that the Nazis had tried to place before Catholics�the choice between "Germanism" and disloyalty.

From Time Magazine Archive

What such Kelticism or Germanism may have to do with these same characteristics is neither so well ascertained, nor yet so easy to discover.

From The Ethnology of the British Islands by Latham, R. G. (Robert Gordon)

He was the Jenner of our modern style, inoculating and saving us all by his quaint frank Germanism, then dying of his own disease.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 54, April, 1862 by Various

When the heathen world had outlived its faculties, and its creative power had failed, it sank into the ocean of the past--a sphinx, with her riddle guessed,--and medi�val civilization arose, founded upon Christianity and Germanism.

From The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and Modern Times by Biese, Alfred