schwarmerei

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The Word of the Day for August 3 is:

schwarmerei   \shavair-muh-RYE\   noun 
     : excessive or unwholesome sentiment

Example sentence:
     The poet's later works are refreshingly free of the schwarmerei that 
hobbled his earlier efforts.

Did you know?
     In 1845, the editors of the _Edinburgh Review_ felt compelled to use the 
German "Schwarmerei" to describe fanatical enthusiasm because the concept 
seemed so foreign to them. In commenting on the writings of German critic and 
dramatist Gotthold Lessing, they declared "Schwarmerei" to be "untranslatable, 
because the thing itself is un-English." That German word derives from the verb 
"schwarmen," which means not only "to be enthusiastic" but "to swarm" (it was 
used to refer to bees), and its ancestors were part of Old High German. 
Ironically, the _Edinburgh Review's_ use (the first ever documented in an 
English publication) seems to have contributed to making the word much more 
English, and it has since become a naturalized citizen of our language. 





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