List of English words of German origin

There are a number of German terms for which there are no useful English equivalents. Because of their usefulness, these terms – called loan words – have entered the English lexicon.

This list (with nearest synonyms) includes:
*Ablaut (the alternation of sounds within a word that indicates grammatical information)
*Achtung (attention)
*Aha-Erlebnis/Aha-Effekt (autodidactic discovery)
*Angst (a feeling of anxiety, apprehension, or insecurity)
*Ansatz (one of the most used German loan words in the English-speaking world of science)
*Bildungsroman (a novel regarding personal character growth)
*Blitz ("lightning", came to be known as a metaphor for "extremely fast"/a explicably fast maneuver or movement.)
*Blitzkrieg (lightning war)
*Bratwurst (sausage)
*Doppelgänger (a ghostly counterpart of a living person)
*Ersatz (being a usually artificial and inferior substitute or imitation)
*Festschrift (a volume of writings by different authors presented as a tribute or memorial especially to a scholar)
*Fraktur (a typeface style resembling blackletter)
*Gastarbeiter (guest worker)
*Gedankenexperiment (a thought experiment)
*Gegenschein (a light phenomenon in a dark night sky)
*Gemütlich (comfortable), Gemütlichkeit (cordiality, friendliness)
*Gesamtkunstwerk (comprehensive work)
*Gestalt (epiphany, a structure, configuration, or pattern of physical, biological, or psychological phenomena so integrated as to constitute a functional unit with properties not derivable by summation of its parts)
*Glockenspiel
*Götterdämmerung (literally: twilight of the gods; a collapse (as of a society or regime) marked by catastrophic violence and disorder)
*Hinterland (countryside far away from urban areas)
*Kindergarten (nursery, lit. "Garden of children" or "Garden for children")
*Lebensraum (space required for life, growth, or activity, compare to "Elbow room", "Living-room')
*Leitmotiv (a dominant recurring theme)
*Meister ((master/teacher, Ex. "Mr."; compare to "Maestro"); see also the words from "Todesfuge": "Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland" by Paul Celan)
*Mittelschmerz (middle pain, used to refer to ovulation pain)
*Ostalgie (nostalgia for the former Eastern Bloc; Ost means East in german)
*Pretzel Pastry of German origin, the name cames from the German word "Brezel".
*Poltergeist (a noisy usually mischievous ghost held to be responsible for unexplained noises)
*Putsch (revolution; a secretly plotted and suddenly executed attempt to overthrow a government)
*Realpolitik (politics based on practical and material factors rather than on theoretical or ethical objectives)
*Rucksack (backpack)
*Sauerkraut (sour cabbage)
*Schadenfreude (enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others)
*Sturm und Drang (lit. "storm and stress"; turmoil)
*Über (ultra, "very"), Übermensch (superman/superhuman)
*Überfremdung claim that some aspect of a culture has been too heavily penetrated by foreign influence
*Umlaut (the diacritic over the vowels "ä", "ö" and "ü", or more generally the phenomenon of vowel shifts such as the one in German that is represented by this diacritic)
*Urheimat (original homeland of the speakers of a proto-language)
*Ursprache (proto-language)
*Waldsterben (forest dieback)
*Wanderlust (strong longing for or impulse toward wandering)
*Weltanschauung (a comprehensive conception or apprehension of the world especially from a specific standpoint)
*Weltschmerz (lit. "world-pain"; mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state of the world with an ideal state)
*Wirtschaftswunder (designates the upturn experienced in the West German and Austrian economies after the Second World War)
*Wunderkind (a child prodigy)
*Zeitgeist ("spirit of the times"; actually a German calque originating from a Shakespeare translation)

ee also

*List of German expressions in English
*German placename etymology
*German name
*List of Spanish words of Germanic origin
*List of Portuguese words of Germanic origin
*List of English words of Yiddish origin