Great german words in english
![great german words in english great german words in english](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/33/7b/87/337b87211387dcaf8b53230fcef365db.jpg)
foosball - a shortening and anglicization of Tischfußball (“table football”).leitmotif - leit (“lead”) + Motiv (“motive”), so roughly meaning “leading motive,” but in literature it refers to recurring themes in a work.bildungsroman - Bildung (“education”) + Roman (“novel”), which is comparable to a “coming-of-age novel”.gestalt - literally meaning “shape,” this is an art term often distilled to “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”.bauhaus - while many artistic movements have come out of Germany, this early 20th century architectural style might be the most successful.realpolitik - a philosophy of politics that focuses on practical rather than ideological concerns.antifa - meaning anti-fascist, from the German Antifaschistische Aktion.kindergarten - Kinder (“children”) + Garten (“garden”).kitsch - in English, this word refers to a kind of style that is gaudy or garish, but in German it originally just meant “trash”.wanderlust - the desire to travel and move around, though English speakers now use this word much more often than German speakers do.zeitgeist - Zeit (“time”) + Geist (“spirit”), roughly meaning “the spirit of the time”.Germany has had a wide-ranging impact on culture and politics, and you can see that influence just by looking at the German words that have been adopted by English speakers. hamburger - named after Hamburg, a city in Germany.bundt cake - anglicization of Bundkuchen.lager - a shortened version of Lagerbier, which means “warehouse beer” because it was meant to be brewed and stored for future consumption.pilsner - a kind of beer named after the German town Pilsen, which is located in the Czech Republic.frankfurter - a shortening of Frankfurter Wurst (“Frankfurter sausage”).biergarten - Bier (“beer”) + Garten (“garden”).pumpernickel - a type of rye bread, though where the word comes from exactly is a matter of some debate.wiener (as in hot dog) - from Wiener Würstchen (“Viennese sausage”).seltzer - comes from the German village Selters.gummy bear - adapted from the Gummibärchen (“little gummy bears”) first made by German company Haribo.sauerkraut - sauer (“sour”) + Kraut (“cabbage”).Even if you know that, though, there might be a few on this list you weren’t expecting.
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It shouldn’t come as any surprise that a lot of the English words that are actually German refer to food and beer.
![great german words in english great german words in english](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/79/e8/35/79e8359eb4564c6f17b3b2a4b05bc76d.jpg)
It makes sense that English would want to borrow so much from German. There are even a surprising number of English words that are actually German, which we borrowed a bit more recently. English is a hodgepodge of vocabulary taken from Latin, French, Spanish and a huge number of other languages. You would think that means that English and German would have a ton in common, but language is never so simple. That means it comes from the same root as German, Norwegian, Danish and a number of other languages.