How once nemesi German enriches the British language!

In enjoyed war movies like The Longest Day, Judgement at Nuremberg ("Write sperring?") the Allied forces comprising Americans and Brits always emerged Victorious. I still can hum a few stanzas of the Theme song that without fail goes with the Hollywood production, and a child never wonders WHY the Germans always won the battles but lost the war.

But along the way I picked up a few German words, like "Achtung!". Erthswhile Arch enemy England dit-to!:)

So German-ise thyself -- from Wordsmith.org:


Mar 29, 2010
This week's theme
Words borrowed from German

This week's words
gotterdammerung

Discuss this week's words
on our bulletin board:
Wordsmith Talk Discuss
Feedback
RSS/XML Bookmark and Share Facebook Twitter Digg MySpace Bookmark and Share
A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

The German language's affinity for sesquipedalians once led Mark Twain to quip, "Some German words are so long that they have a perspective." Having polysyllabic words in a language is no sin as long as you get your words' worth. In that respect, those lengthy German words are worth every syllable. Where else can you find a single word, schadenfreude, for example, that conveys the whole concept of 'pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others'? The English language knows a good thing when it sees one, and has helped itself to many terms from German. This week we'll meet five of them, both with and without 'perspective'.

Note: German nouns are capitalized, so often you'll see these words written the same way in English.
gotterdammerung

PRONUNCIATION:
(got-uhr-DAM-uh-roong, -rung)

MEANING:
noun: Complete destruction of an institution, regime, order, etc.

ETYMOLOGY:
From German Götterdämmerung (twilight of the gods), from Götter, plural of Gott (god) + Dämmerung (twilight). Götterdämmerung was the name of the last of Richard Wagner's four operas titled Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung). The German word Götterdämmerung is a translation of the Old Norse Ragnarök which in Scandinavian mythology refers to the destruction of the gods in a battle with evil, resulting in the end of the world. The term Ragnarök is from regin (gods) + rok (fate, course) confused by some with Ragnarökkr (literally, twilight of the gods).

USAGE:
"What began as the exuberant union of two college-age strivers is coming to a devastating end after 18 years, and the Gotterdammerung is being fought out not in court but inside the couple's perfect house."
Michelle Green; Dirty Divorcing; People (New York); Feb 19, 1990.

Explore "gotterdammerung" in the Visual Thesaurus.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
I'd rather be a climbing ape than a falling angel. -Terry Pratchett, novelist (b. 1948)