zeitgeist

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The Word of the Day for February 15 is:

zeitgeist   \TSYTE-ghyste\   noun, often capitalized 
     : the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era

Example sentence:
     Uncle Jerry reminisced about the free love and political and social 
activism that were all prominent in the zeitgeist of the 1960s.

Did you know? 
     Scholars have long maintained that each era has a unique spirit, a nature 
or climate that sets it apart from all other epochs. In German, such a spirit 
is known as "Zeitgeist," from the German words "Zeit," meaning "time," and 
"Geist," meaning "spirit" or "ghost." Some writers and artists assert that the 
true zeitgeist of an era cannot be known until it is over, and several have 
declared that only artists or philosophers can adequately explain it. We don't 
know if that's true, but we do know that "zeitgeist" has been a useful addition 
to the English language since at least 1835.




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