geist

See also Geist

English

Etymology

From German Geist (“spirit, ghost, mind”). More at ghost.

Noun

geist (plural geists)

1. Ghost, apparition.
   • 1877, The spiritual magazine:

     The geists eat and drink, but only as geists — not as spirits. ' We have dined,' they say ' sumptuously.' A vapour- ... If dead men tell no tales, their geists will tell them, if they find opportunity.

   • 1881, M.T.W., Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories^[1], edition reprint, Project Gutenberg, published 2005:

     Koerg was not slow to recognize a geist; his knees shook, and he dared not utter a word.

   • 1996, Stephen Barker, Excavations and Their Objects:

     [...] it makes no difference whether these figures were real, corporeal beings or not, since each one, in terms of Freud's (auto) aesthetic, is a spirit, a geist, a complex function of Freud's worldview.

2. Spirit (of a group, age, era, etc).
   • 1974, V. Jagannatha Panicker, Crucifixion of the Unborn: Underpopulated India^[2], edition Digitized, Sivaji Publications, published 2008, page 54:

     The population that today explodes on a stagnant society with a catastrophic echo, is the geist of the times that shock our great nation into a new sense of her grandeur.

   • 1976, Colorado lawyer - Volume 5^[3], Law, Colorado Bar Association, page 1640:

     However, the geist of the times following the World War was the "normalcy" of Warren G. Harding.

   • 1995, Donald Pizer, The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism:

     [...] a term badly applied, as the method is neither a historicism (the belief that each era or period has a geist, principle of identity, or a definable sense of destiny) nor new.

   • 2009 Tuesday, 13 October, Adam Curtis, Lee Ravitz (comment), “Kabul: City Number One - Part 3”, BBC:

     ... particular 'culture areas' of the world are dominated by their own peculiar geist or 'cultural soul' ...

Related terms

• poltergeist
• zeitgeist

References

• OED, geist