Yep juggernaut is defintely Indian, it’s an avatar of Vishnu in Hindu folklore and it’s one of the many words that English borrowed from the Indian languages during the time of the British Raj.
not so common, but still used occassionally:
weltanshauung (“world view/outlook” … used in philosophy)
katzenjammer
zaftig (but this may also be via Yiddish)
And I simply assumed it was German. I guess I am not the language-meister I thought I was.
Did I miss something here?
How is this a German word?
Do we use the word Schlimmverbesserung** in English? I forget since I’m fairly fluent in German, and can’t remember if I"ve come across the word in English.
*=a bad “improvement”, i.e. a change that was supposed to make something better but made it worse instead.
An old thread on this topic. Note that there are several lists in that previous thread with numerous German-derived words.
Never heard it before, but we sure could use a word with that meaning.
Not German in origin, but a German word, and mentioned by Gest as one of those false friends in German.
If you are not on the lookout for those false friends you might find yourself a bit underdressed in the Gymnasium, when given a Gift beverage drink it and then disappear into the Mist.
Oh, right. Like when a clown dies.
echt
gemutlich
blitz
kaiser
strudel
lieder, lied, liederhosen
pretzel
panzer
Oktoberfest, lager, Pilsener
And what’s the one from the VW ads? Farfignugen, or something
What about ‘O.K.’, which I think is German for ol korrect.
A truly excellent German word that deserves to catch on, as it represents in one word a concept not equally expressible in English (like “Gestalt” or “Zeitgeist” or “Schadenfreude”), is Treppenwitz. Literally “wit of the stairs,” it means the joke or riposte or other response that comes to mind after the fact, too late to actually use.
I should clarify that I picked up “Treppenwitz” in a Snopes story; I personally speak only a smattering of German.
Oh, and Lateralus, close, but not quite.
I’m not sure about this “wit of the staircase” word–I studied French lit, not German, but “l’esprit de l’escalier” was used in the 18th century, maybe earlier. I know British essayists like Rebecca West and Malcolm Muggeridge use the French term. I suspect the German word is derived from the French, as its a literal translation. Or maybe vice versa. In any case, it’s a good concept
Methinks you meant Lederhosen. Perhaps Leder, too, though lieder is also a word.
Isn’t echt a Dutch word?
A student of linguistics once told me that American English is in some ways even more Germanic than English English - for example, you hear long constructions in AE like “The 1992 presidential election campaign” - echos of those huge compound nouns and heavy sentences one finds in German. Anyone else heard of this?
echt is a word in Dutch and in German, meaning ‘real’, ‘genuine’. The usage may be slightly different,* but overlaps mostly.
- See thistranslation, which mentions ‘echter Bruch’. In Dutch it would be ‘correct’ or ‘kloppend’ or so.
I always sensed this …
I may be wrong but isn’t it, that:
German Theater = BE theatre = AE theater
So, AE keeps the ‘German’ -er instead of changing it to -re like in BE.
You’re confusing “German origin” and “Germanic origin”. Many English words are of Germanic origin, which means they came from what linguists call proto-Germanic, the (lost) ancestor language of all modern Germanic languages. But “of German origin” means that the words came from the modern language known as German. As far as I’m aware none of the words you listed are of German origin.
No. Please try to do some research before posting such nonsense to a board dedicated to fighting ignorance.
According to Merriam-Webster
I haven’t got my Duden here, but I would guess that the German word Theater came from French, and the spelling was adapted to suit the prononciation. (Just like the AE spelling is a recent simplification (by Noah Webster?).