geist
See also: Geist
English edit
Etymology edit
From German Geist (“spirit, ghost, mind”). Doublet of ghost.
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
geist (plural geists)
- 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], reprint edition, 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.
- 1877, The spiritual magazine:
- Spirit (of a group, age, era, etc).
- 1974, V. Jagannatha Panicker, Crucifixion of the Unborn: Underpopulated India[2], Digitized edition, 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.
- 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 October 13, Adam Curtis, Lee Ravitz (comment), “Kabul: City Number One - Part 3”, in BBC[4]:
- ... particular 'culture areas' of the world are dominated by their own peculiar geist or 'cultural soul' ...
Related terms edit
References edit
- OED, geist
Anagrams edit
Estonian edit
Noun edit
geist
Old High German edit
Alternative forms edit
Etymology edit
From Proto-West Germanic *gaist, from Proto-Germanic *gaistaz.
Noun edit
geist m (plural geista)
Declension edit
Declension of geist (masculine a-stem)
case | singular | plural |
---|---|---|
nominative | geist | geista |
accusative | geist | geista |
genitive | geistes | geisto |
dative | geiste | geistum |
instrumental | geistu | — |