Timeline for Is there an English variant of "Zeitgeist" other than "spirit of the times"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
17 events
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| Jan 27, 2018 at 10:46 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackEnglish/status/957203171222450176 | ||
| Jan 25, 2018 at 7:15 | history | edited | NVZ♦ |
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| Nov 12, 2016 at 20:27 | history | protected | tchrist♦ | ||
| Aug 31, 2015 at 17:09 | comment | added | David Garner | I'm sticking with zeitgeist. If it's used for long enough, it'll lose any notion of pretension, won't it? | |
| Aug 31, 2015 at 11:58 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | @Superbest This has been covered before. 'True' (exactly overlapping and thus always interchangeable) synonyms are exceedingly rare (I'm still trying to separate 'abstruse' and 'recondite'), if they exist at all. The term is normally and sensibly used to mean 'words identical, or near-identical, in meaning and distribution over some subset of their usages'. Even a single word is infinitely polysemous. | |
| Aug 4, 2014 at 20:01 | comment | added | Superbest | @RegDwigнt So you're claiming that synonyms don't exist? | |
| Aug 4, 2014 at 13:08 | comment | added | RegDwigнt | @bright I'm not sure I agree. Frankly, I think your fear is rather irrational and a prime example of the red-car effect. Ngrams shows that the relative popularity of the word has barely tripled since 1970. (Even the relative popularity of such a mundane word as despite has increased tenfold in the last century.) If you specifically set out to look for red cars on the street, you will start seeing nothing but red cars absolutely everywhere. Most to the point: why let others coerce you into not using a word? If I keep repeating "beer" cloaked in pretension, will you stop using that one, too? | |
| Aug 4, 2014 at 12:58 | vote | accept | Mike Zavarello | ||
| Aug 4, 2014 at 12:57 | comment | added | Mike Zavarello | @DanBron "Cloaked in pretension" is precisely how I see most of its use. I do like "social climate" as an alternative. | |
| Aug 4, 2014 at 12:56 | comment | added | mplungjan | Have a look at Trends. | |
| Aug 4, 2014 at 12:56 | comment | added | Mike Zavarello | @RegDwigнt Aye, this was as I feared. I'm all for borrowed words, but this one seems borrowed a bit too over-zealously for my taste. | |
| Aug 4, 2014 at 12:55 | comment | added | Wayfaring Stranger | You might slip in élan du jour ocassionally, but it is neither english, nor a single word. | |
| Aug 4, 2014 at 12:51 | comment | added | RegDwigнt | No other word means "zeitgeist". Only zeitgeist means "zeitgeist". (This is true of all words, by the way, and in all languages.) Everything else will mean something different. That is why it was borrowed in the first place: we did not have an equivalent of our own. | |
| Aug 4, 2014 at 12:51 | answer | added | user66974 | timeline score: 1 | |
| Aug 4, 2014 at 12:39 | answer | added | SrJoven | timeline score: 10 | |
| Aug 4, 2014 at 12:26 | comment | added | Dan Bron | I don't think there's a precise substitute, which is why we encounter "Zeitgeist" so often, though I agree that not only conveys the idea but also is cloaked in pretension. Perhaps "social climate" is a workable substitute? | |
| Aug 4, 2014 at 12:22 | history | asked | Mike Zavarello | CC BY-SA 3.0 |