German words without English equivalent
Engelsgeduld: (lit.: angel’s patience) great amount of patience
Feierabend: (lit.: party-evening) the rest of the day that remains after work
Fernweh: the desire/longing to travel to faraway places/ foreign countries
Fingerspitzengefühl: (lit.: fingertips-feeling) good skill in handling things/ sensitivity and empathy
Fremdschämen: (lit.: foreign shame) shame that arises from the compassion with someone who made a fool of himself
Geborgenheit: more than safety, protection and invulnerability, it symbolises peace, warmth and calm you feel especially when you’re with the people you’re close to (e.g. family, friends)
Gemütlichkeit: feeling of comfort
Habseligkeiten: valuable and personally important possessions
Innerer Schweinehund: (lit.: inner pig-dog = weaker self) the part of a person that they have to overcome to be productive
Kitsch: objects with superficial beauty that are actually useless but are appreciated nonetheless
Konfliktfähigkeit: (lit.: conflict ability/skill) ability to deal with conflict / ability to constructively solve interpersonal conflicts
Kummerspeck: (lit.: grief/sorrow bacon (fat)) gained weight from emotional overeating (especially after a breakup)
Lebenslüge: (lit.: life’s lie) a lie that you tell yourself to make life more bearable
Mitdenken: (lit.: with-thinking) ability to think for yourself and do more than what you were demanded to do / trying to find a conceptional solution to a problem together with other people
Sehnsucht: intense inner longing for somebody, something or a place
Schnapsidee: (lit.: schnapps idea) a ridiculous and crazy plan/idea you have while you are drunk or an idea that is so stupid that people think you had it while being drunk
Sprachgefühl: (lit.: language feeling) feeling/sense of language, instinctive feel for a certain language / intuitive feeling of what is linguistically appropriate
Stehaufmännchen: (lit.: little stand up man) someone who doesn’t give up and begins anew
Torschlusspanik: (lit.: gate-closing-panic) the fear of missing something important / not being able to do some things (because you’re too old)
Verschlimmbessern: (lit.: verschlimmern=exasperate, verbessern=improve) improve something for the worse / make something worse but with having had the intention of improving it
Vorführeffekt: (lit.: demo effect) the effect that something you’re actually able to do doesn’t work when you want to demonstrate it to other people
Waldeinsamkeit: (lit.: forest loneliness/solitude) the seclusion/solitude of the forest
Warmduscher: (lit.: warm showerer/ somebody who showers with warm water) a wimp / a person that doesn’t like to leave their comfort zone
Weltschmerz: (lit.: world pain (world weariness)) gratuitous melancholia / kind of feeling experienced by someone who believes that physical reality can never satisfy the demands of the mind / the feeling of anxiety caused by the ills of the world
Zeitgeist: (lit.: time-spirit, spirit of the time ) the dominant set of ideals and beliefs that motivate the actions of the members of a society in a particular period in time
