Thursday, June 01, 2006

weltschmerz

I love to learn new words, as I think does every writer. But sometimes, a word is just so perfect. In reading the news about this year's Scripps National Spelling Bee, it turns out that the word that knocked out the second place speller was "weltschmerz." I'd never heard of it, but it means, per the article, "sadness over the evils of the world."

Wow.

Great to have one word that sums that feeling up. Weltschmerz. I'll remember it now... and hope that I never have a need to use it.

My hat is tipped to all the remarkable Spelling Bee spellers... and with that, I'll proofread this for the 3,000,000th time and hope I didn't make any mistakes.

5 comments:

web said...

One of the all-time great words, up there with "angst."

If I hasn't just stayed up til almost 2 a.m. writing my poetry friday entry, I would attempt a fib using it.

F. S. Poesy said...

I was amazed at how many of the kids were thrown by the German based words.

Weltschmerz is one of my favorite German words, as is schadenfreude, which is "pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others".

I must admit I probably feel shadenfreude much more often than weltscherz. Not sure what that says about me, but I don't think it's good. :]

I also like schadenfreude because it is the only german word that I based one of my metaplastic words on.

Anonymous said...

That is a great word. Thanks!

Christabel said...

Yeah, very nice word. I think some of the best words ever have their basis in German philosophy.

Anonymous said...

My friends and I were totally obsessed with this word in college.

Love it!!

:D
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