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ganger, double n.

See doppelganger.

ganzfeld n.

from Ganzfeld "whole field": a type of experiment used in researching psychic experiences [< German ganz "complete, whole, perfect" < Middle High German ganz < Old High German ganz + Feld "field" < Middle High German veld < Old High German feld].

• "I am, in fact, the subject of a ganzfeld experiment. Ganzfeld, German for 'whole field,' refers to the boundless void in which I seem to be afloat." Kenneth Miller, "Phychics: Science or Séance?" Life, June 1998.
• Exploring Psi in the Ganzfeld, by Carl Sargent, 1980.
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Gasthaus, gasthaus n. [pl. Gasthäuser]

from Gasthaus "guest house": a small inn or hotel in German-speaking countries [< German Gast "guest" + Haus "house"]. See also Bauhaus, Gasthof and hausfrau. This entry suggested by Christiane Leißner.

• "For me there will always be one gasthaus in Niessen: the Niessener Hof." John Wray, The Right Hand of Sleep, 2001.
• "They went into the little Gasthaus and got some black bread and sausage and some milk." Francis Hodgson Burnett, The Lost Prince, 1941, p. 245.
• "There were fences to cling to, and leading from the railway station to the Gasthaus a little path of cinders had been strewn for the benefit of the wedding guests. The Gasthaus was very festive." Katherine Mansfield, In a German Pension.
• "Three taverns, bearing the sign of 'The Pig and Whistle,' indicated the recent English, a cabaret to the Universal Republic, with a red flag, the French, and the Gasthaus zum Rheinplatz, the Teutonic contributions to the strength of our nation." Frederick Law Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveller's Observations on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States: Based upon Three Former Volumes of Journeys and Investigations, 1861, p. 295. The name of the inn, Gasthaus zum Rheinplatz, means "Inn on Rhine Square".
• "Every night, in the course of his rambles, his highness the Sultan (indeed, his port is sublime, as, for the matter of that, are all the wines in his cellar) sets down with an iron pen, and in the neatest handwriting in the world, the events and observations of the day; with the same iron pen he illuminates the leaf of his journal by the most faithful and delightful sketches of the scenery which he has witnessed in the course of the four-and-twenty hours; and if he has dined at an inn or restaurant, gasthaus, posada, albergo, or what not, invariably inserts into his log-book the bill of fare." William Makepeace Thackeray, Early and Late Papers Hitherto Uncollected, 1867, p. 1.
• "An example of this kind occurs near the Bernina Gasthaus, about two hours from Pontresina." John Tyndall, Hours of exercise in the Alps, 1871, p. 226.
• "Not far from there is a GASTHAUS whose stucco and half-timber construction would look echt in Innsbruck." John Skow, "World Without Walls", Time, Aug. 13, 1990, p. 70.

Gasthof, gasthof n. [pl. Gasthöfe, gasthofs]

from Gasthof "guest court": a hotel in German-speaking countries, usually larger than a Gasthaus [< German Gast "guest" + Hof "court, yard, courtyard"]. This entry suggested by Christiane Leißner.

• "Should I walk back to the village, go to the Gasthof, write a letter craving permission to call on my cousins, and wait there till an answer came?" Elizabeth von Arnim, Elizabeth and Her German Garden.

gedanken experiment n.

from Gedankenexperiment "thought experiment": in physics, an experiment which is only described but not made in reality as it is not possible or was not possible as someone thought of it for the first time. This entry and definition suggested by Hilmar R. Tuneke.

• Gedanken Fictions: Stories on Themes in Science, Technology, and Society, Thomas A. Easton, 2000.
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Geiger counter n.

from Geigerzähler "Geiger counter": an instrument for detecting and counting particles ionized by radiation that pass through it, named for Johannes Wilhelm (Hans) Geiger, 1882-1945, German physicist [German Geiger < Middle High German gîger "violinist" < gige "violin"]. This entry suggested by Wilton Woods.

• "A rad-lab technician came in and checked for leakage from the plutonium with a Geiger counter." Michael Crichton, Terminal Man, 1988, p. 80.
• "An important difference between chemical toxins and radionuclides is that radioactive contamination is readily detected by relatively inexpensive Geiger counters, while the TCDD isomer of dioxin, like many other toxic compounds, can only be determined by use of a gas chromatograph coupled to a mass spectrometer; the cost of the latter instruments are in the range of $100,000 to $500,000." John W. Birks & Sherry L. Stephens, "Possible Toxic Environments Following a Nuclear War", The Medical Implications of Nuclear War, 1986.

Geiger tube n.

a tube filled with gas that is ionized by passing charged particles, producing within the tube an electric charge indicative of a particular particle, named for Johannes Wilhelm (Hans) Geiger, 1882-1945, German physicist.

Geltung n.

from Geltung "validity, recognition": personal standing, recognition, acceptance, esteem, influence [< German gelten "to have value, be worth, be valid, hold good" < Middle High German gelten < Old High German geltan, related to German Geld "money" + -ung "-ing"].

• Showing Off: The Geltung Hypothesis, by Philip L. Wagner, 1995.
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gemeinschaft, Gemeinschaft, Gemeinschaft n.

from Gemeinschaft "community, communion, partnership, association, intercourse, fellowship": a social relationship characterized by strong reciprocal bonds of sentiment and kinship within a common tradition, a community or society characterized by this relationship, a fellowship [< German gemein "(in) common, general" < Middle High German gemein, gemeine < Old High German gimeini + -schaft "-ship" < Middle High German -schaft < Old High German -scaf]. See also gesellschaft. This entry suggested by Richard W. Hartzell.

• "Their [the communitarian Progressives'] theories echoed distinctions articulated by contemporaneous social theorists from Europe—Sir Henry Maine's status versus contract, Ferdinand Tönnies's Gemeinschaft versus Gesellschaft, Emile Durkheim's mechanical versus organic solidarity, and Georg Simmel's comparison of town and metropolis, all expounded between 1860 and 1902." Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, 2001, p. 380.
• "In his seminal study in social anthropology Community and Society (Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft), the nineteenth-century sociologist Ferdinand Toennies concluded that the requisites of traditional blood and clan communities tended inevitably to yield to the requisites of voluntary and contractual societies in an evolution that pointed only forward...." Benjamin Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World, 1996, p. 161.
• "I see the willingness to believe in an epidemic as resulting in part from a Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft fallacy that demonizes industrial or post-industrial society and romanticizes the supportive nature of communities in prior eras." Peter D. Kramer, Against Depression, 2005, p. 313.
• "Perhaps it is our guilt that has directed our attention to these areas of crass 'pseudo-gemeinschaft,' for there is hardly a performance, in whatever area of life, which does not rely on the personal touch to exaggerate the uniqueness of the transactions between performer and audience." Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1959, p. 50.
• "All EU member states strive toward achieving a European Gemeinschaft without anticipating a particular political framework such as a federation, confederation or European commonwealth." David Huang, translated by Wang Hsiao-Wen, "EU-style integration offers hope" Taipei Times, Jun. 9, 2004, p. 8.
• "The network phenomenon offers proof that the earlier antinomies posited by modern sociology—Gemeinschaft vs. Gesellschaft, traditionalism vs. modernity, informal vs. formal—do not hold." Roger Waldinger, How the Other Half Works: Immigration and the Social Organization of Labor, 2003, p. 90.
• Community and Society/Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, by Ferdinand Tönnies, 1988.
• More books and products related to gemeinschaft (in sociology)

gemütlich, gemuetlich, gemutlich adj.

from gemütlich "cozy, comfortable, easy-going, good-natured": congenial, agreeable [German gemütlich < Late Middle High German gemüetlich "concerning the disposition, pleasant, agreeable" < Middle High German gemüete "disposition, nature, feelings, mood" and separately < Old High German gimuati "of the same nature, pleasant, agreeable"]. This entry suggested by Christiane Leißner.

• "Everybody is at least plump in this comfortable, gemutlich town, where everybody placidly locks his shop or office and goes home at noon to dine heavily on soup and meat and vegetables and pudding, washed down by the inevitable beer and followed by forty winks on the dining room sofa with the German Zeitung spread comfortably over the head as protection against the flies." Edna Ferber, Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed, p. 89. Zeitung means "newspaper".
• "This get-together after Midnight Mass in the Christmas Room, which is filled with that indescribable 'Christmas smell'--compounded of wax candles, 'Lebkuchen' and balsam fir--has such a very special quality that even the word 'gemutlich' becomes inadequate." Maria Augusta Trapp, Around the Year with the Trapp Family.
• "I reviewed Gatti's first Mahler Symphony recording, the Fifth in glowing terms (July/Aug 1998) and am also delighted with this lovely, gemutlich Fourth." Gerald S. Fox, "Mahler: Symphony 4; 4 Early Songs", American Record Guide, Mar. 2000.
• "With its open core and rotunda, it is like a fetching little gemutlich miniature of the vertiginous main hall." Kurt Andersen, "Finally Doing Right By Wright: After years of fuss and furor, the great but inhospitable Guggenheim gets a splendid overhaul", Time, Jul. 6, 1992, p. 64.
• "And then there was Francis Coppola, the gemutlich Godfather at age 59, back from visiting his daughter, Sofia, on location of a movie she is directing and buzzing about new entrepreneurial adventures for his beloved, if battle-scarred, Zoetrope company." Peter Bart, "'George and Francis show' returns", Variety, Jul. 27, 1998, p. 64.
• "The woman was visiting Le Pain Quotidian--among the more gemutlich of bakeries--when she decided that it wouldn't be imprudent to park her child's $200 Concorde MacLaren X267 stroller in the vestibule." Ralph Gardner, Jr., "The Crime Blotter", The New York Observer, Mar. 4, 2002.
• "At the height of her success, [Julia] Child could boast a clutch of bestselling cookbooks and a gemütlich TV show shot on a single set." Margaret Talbot, "Les Très Riches Heures de Martha Stewart", <boldtype>, Oct. 1997.

gemütlichkeit, gemutlichkeit, Gemutlichkeit n.

from Gemütlichkeit "congeniality": warm friendliness, amicability [< German gemütlich].

• "Since I have lived in this pretty town I have become a worshiper of the goddess Gemutlichkeit." Edna Ferber, Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed.
• "The lodge is friendly, unpretentious and full of tropical Gemutlichkeit." Robert Hughes, "Blissing Out in Balmy Belize", Time, Apr. 22, 1991, p. 92.
• "In her youth she adored eating, drinking and singing in the beer halls of Munich, and this German enclave at 2015 New Highway (391-9500), owned by Privatbrauerei Hoepfner Brewery in Karlsruhe and its American partners, recreates the gemutlichkeit of its European counterpart." Richard Jay Scholem, "A La Carte; Cars, Very New and Very Old", The New York Times, Oct. 11, 1998. Privatbrauerei means "private brewery".

gesellschaft, Gesellschaft, Gesellschaft n.

from Gesellschaft "companionship, association, company, society, fellowship, club": a rationally developed mechanistic type of social relationship characterized by impersonally contracted associations between persons, a community or society characterized by this relationship [< German Geselle "appentice" < Middle High German geselle "friend, companion, comrade, consort, mate" < Old High German gisello, gisellio + -schaft "-ship" < Middle High German -schaft < Old High German -scaf]. See also gemeinschaft.

• "Know your place, said/The leader, which is together,/And clubbed the errant back,/Giving it the Gesellschaft." John M. Burns, "Conform" BioGraffiti: A Natural Selection, 1981.
• "The Bach Gesellschaft, formed in 1850, devoted itself assiduously to finding, editing, and publishing Bach's works." Wilfrid Mellers, "Bach, Johann Sebastian" Microsoft® Encarta® 96 Encyclopedia, 1996.
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gestalt, Gestalt, Gestalt n. [pl. Gestalts, Gestalten, n. gestaltism, gestaltist]

from Gestalt "form, figure, shape, frame, stature": in Gestalt psychology, a synthesis of separate elements of emotion, experience, etc., that constitutes more than the mechanical sum of the parts. See also ArtLex.

• "But if you look more carefully, you might observe that the general gestalt of the [DNA] sequences is roughly the same." Jonathan Marks, What It Means to Be 98% Chimpanzee, 2003, p. 25.
• "Understand the gestalt in this easy-to-remember history." Wendy Northcutt, The Darwin Awards II, 2001, p. 1.
• "During these years, Robert also participated in a long menu of psychotherapies: group therapy, family therapy, multifamily group therapy, Gestalt therapy, psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy, goal-oriented therapy, art therapy, behavioral therapy, vocational rehabilitation therapy, milieu therapy, et al." Jay Neugeboren, Imagining Robert: My Brother, Madness and Survival: A Memoir, 1998.
• "His photographs came to be a distinctive element of hundreds of album covers, which helped to define the unique Blue Note gestalt." M. Cuscuna, C. Lourie and O. Schnider, The Blue Note Years: The Jazz Photography of Francis Wolf, 1995.
• "Similarly, group dynamics was perceived as old-fashioned, a field that had seen its heyday in the Gestalt encounter groups and corporate brainstorming procedures of the early 1970s but now was dated and passé." Michael Crichton, Sphere, 1987, p. 13.
• "'We need a new political gestalt in America: an expansion of the political arena to more accurately reflect not only what we do, but who we are and are becoming.'" Marianne Williamson, The Healing of America, 1997.
• "Much more an enormous pig than a sort of horse,/Hippo lives, as a matter of course,/Both in water—still or running, fresh or salt—/And on adjacent land, where its Gestalt/Takes fifty pounds (dry weight) of grass per night." John M. Burns, "Hippopotamus amphibius" BioGraffiti: A Natural Selection, 1981.
• Creative Process in Gestalt Therapy, by Joseph Zinker and David Wilde, 1978.
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Gestapo n.

short for Geheime Staatspolizei "Secret State Police": the terrorist political police of the Nazi regime.

• "You can't scare me with this Gestapo crap." Keanu Reeves as Neo in Matrix, 1999.
• "William Casey, an Allied Intelligence officer, later recalled being told in early May 1945 that the Werewolf organisation was in process of formation and that it was to be built on the framework of the Gestapo and other Nazi security services." Ada Petrova & Peter Watson, The Death of Hitler: The Full Story With New Evidence from Secret Russian Archives, 1996.
• "Even in the early decades of the twentieth century, telescoped words and phrases had been one of the characteristic features of political language; and it had been noticed that the tendency to use abbreviations of this kind was most marked in totalitarian countries and totalitarian organizations. Examples were such words as Nazi, Gestapo, Comintern, Inprecorr, Agitprop. In the beginning the practice had been as it were instinctively, but in Newspeak it was used with a conscious purpose." George Orwell, 1984, 1949, p. 252.
• "Tainted evidence about his relations with the Gestapo had been fabricated." Hella Pick, Simon Wiesenthal: A Life in Search of Justice, 1996.
• Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews, and Ordinary Germans, by Eric A. Johnson, 2000.
• Hitler's Enforcers: The Gestapo and the SS Security Service in the Nazi Revolution, by George C. Browder, 1996.
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gesundheit, Gesundheit, Gesundheit interj.

from Gesundheit "healthiness": used to wish someone good health specially to one who has just sneezed. (As a kid I always thought gesundheit literally meant "bless you" in German.)

• "Whether you call it pop or soda, bucket or pail, baby carriage or baby buggy, scat or gesundheit, the beach or the shore—all these and countless others tell us a little something about where you come from." Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way, 1990, p. 99.
• Gesundheit!: Bringing Good Health to You, the Medical System, and Society Through Physician Service, Complementary Therapies, Humor, and Joy, by Patch Adams, 1998.
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Gleichschaltung n.

from Gleichschaltung "equalization": the standardization of political, economic, and social institutions in authoritarian states [< German gleich "same, equal" + Schaltung "switching" < schalten "to switch"]. This entry suggested by Christiane Leißner.

• "Simultaneously, the 'Gleichschaltung' (equalization) started; that is to say that the personnel of all offices and institutions of the Government or under Government control became subject to substitution by reliable members of the German National Socialist Party." Gabor Baross, Hungary and Hitler, 1964.
• "The findings of this study are not dramatically new, but they provide a nicely nuanced outline of both the complexity of the time and the diversity of the individual actors and their disillusionment as they came face to face with the full implications of Gleichschaltung, which gradually demonstrated an unanticipated authority and discomfiting militancy and brutality." Larry Thornton, "On the Road to the Wolf's Lair: German Resistance to Hitler", review of the book by Theodore S. Hamerow, Historian, Fall 1999.
• "Throughout these first years of the Third Reich, Hitler imposed a process that the Nazis called Gleichschaltung, which means standardization or making things the same." "Road to War", Time, Aug. 28, 1989, p. 40.
• "Not much comfort here, then, for those now busily intent upon a historical Gleichschaltung of all Irish 'traditions'." K. Theodore Hoppen, "An Ascendancy Army: The Irish Yeomanry, 1796-1834", English Historical Review, Jun. 1999.
• "This remarkable gathering at Germany's most hallowed literary shrine, the town of Schiller and Goethe, was in fact a tradition that had survived Nazi Gleichschaltung." Gerwin Strobl, "Shakespeare and the Nazis", History Today, May 1997.
• "In the name of modernization, Reza Shah mounted one of the most frightful manifestations of fascist statism in modern history, eliminating all autonomous centers of voluntary association, generating a Gleichschaltung program very similar to Hitler's agenda in the contemporary Germany." Hamid Dabashi, "The End of Islamic Ideology", Social Research, Summer 2000.
• "Axel Goodbody, Dennis Tate, and Ian Wallace refute a simplistic equation of the German Democratic Republic with the NS-politics of Gleichschaltung, or mass control through ideological uniformity, by charting criticism internal to that state." Karen H. Jankowsky, "German Cultural Studies: An Introduction", Criticism, Winter 1998.

glitz n., v.t., glitzy adj.

related to Glitzer, glitzern "glitter, to glitter": extravagant showiness, glitter [perh. < Yiddish, perh. < German glitzern "to glitter" < Middle High German glitzen "to glitter"].

• "Behind the glitz and silliness of the 'multimedia extravaganza' view of the Net touted by the mass media, this 'old Internet' is still chugging along, growing every day." Evan Morris, The Book Lover's Guide to the Internet, 1998, p. 12.
• "My enchantment with new things, my vulnerability to the hopeful glitz of even garish packaging has really not diminished." Alan Shapiro, The Last Happy Occasion, 1996.
• "Clouded by event, and stripped of glitz, this year's Toronto Film Festival let the movies shine through", Richard Corliss, "An Unfestive Festival", Time, Oct. 8, 2001, p. 65.
• "'If a person's into glitz, Rico's not for them.'" Dave Hill, in Carol Horner, "ZipUSA: Rico, Colorado", National Geographic, Mar. 2001, p. 128.
• Fabulous Las Vegas in the 50s: Glitz, Glamour & Games, by Fred E. Basten and Charles Phoenix, 1999.
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glockenspiel n.

from Glockenspiel "bell play": a percussion instrument

gneiss n.

from Gneis "gneiss": a rock resembling granite, consisting of alternating layers of different minerals, such as feldspar, quartz, mica, and hornblende [probably from Middle High German gneist, ganeist "a spark" and Old High German gneisto "a spark" due to the luster of some of the components]. See further example under quartzite.

• "It has been remarked, with much truth, that abruptly conical hills are characteristic of the formation which Humboldt designates as gneiss-granite." Charles Darwin, "Rio de Janeiro" The Voyage of the Beagle, 1836.
• "You sprawl face down on a sloping pavement of gneiss, pressed to the rock by the weight of your pack, and lie there for some minutes, reflecting in a distant, out-of-body way that you have never before looked this closely at anything in the natural world since you were four years old and had your first magnifying glass." Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods, 1997.
• Petrology and Structure of Gneiss Anticlines Near Baltimore, Maryland, by Fisher, 1987.
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götterdämmerung, Götterdämmerung, Götterdämmerung, Die Götterdämmerung n.

from Götterdämmerung "twilight of the gods": in Germanic mythology, the destruction of the gods and of all things in a final battle with evil powers resulting in the end of the world, also called Ragnarok in Scandinavian mythology; the final opera of Richard Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung on this theme; a collapse (as of a society, regime or institution) marked by catastrophic violence and disorder [< German Götter (plural of Gott "god") + Dämmerung "twilight" < erroneous translation of Old Icelandic Ragnarôk "fate of the gods" misunderstood as Ragnarökkr "twilight of the gods"]. This entry suggested by Wilton Woods.

• "She died. Almost a month ago. I guess she'd been ill, and she thought she didn't have long, so she treated herself to a steak dinner and took all her cats and went and sat in her Cadillac in the garage and turned on the engine while her CD player was doing the immolation scene from Die Götterdämmerung." Garrison Keillor, Wobegon Boy, 1997, p. 269.
• "There were, she told him, rehearsals not only for 'Walkure,' but also for 'Gotterdammerung,' in which she was to sing Waltraute two weeks later." Willa Silbert Cather, The Song of the Lark, p. 470.
• "The War Department in Washington had taken up this notion on 12 February 1945, warning that a man like Hitler would require his Gotterdammerung." Ada Petrova, The Death of Hitler: The Full Story with New Evidence from Secret Russian Archives.
• "Even the Hudson and the Susquehanna--perhaps the Potomac itself--had often risen to drown out the gods of Walhalla, and one could hardly listen to the 'Gotterdammerung' in New York, among throngs of intense young enthusiasts, without paroxysms of nervous excitement that toned down to musical philistinism at Baireuth, as though the gods were Bavarian composers." Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams.
• "The Ring consists of four plays, intended to be performed on four successive evenings, entitled The Rhine Gold (a prologue to the other three), The Valkyries, Siegfried, and Night Falls On The Gods; or, in the original German, Das Rheingold, Die Walkure, Siegfried, and Die Gotterdammerung." George Bernard Shaw, The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring.
• Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods): In Full Score, by Richard Wagner.
• "Götterdämmerung, Die (Twilight of the Gods), opera in 3 acts" composed by Richard Wagner, Twilight of the Gods: The Essential Wagner Collection.
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grosswetterlage, Grosswetterlage n.

from Großwetterlage "general weather situation": the sea-level pressure distribution averaged over a period during which the essential characteristics of the atmospheric circulation over a large region remain nearly unchanged (definition from the Glossary of Oceanography and the Related Geosciences) [German groß "large, great" + Wetter "weather" + Lage "situation, position"]. This entry suggested by Volker Landgraf.

• "They found that the synoptic-scale flow pattern characterized by the Grosswetterlage (greater synoptic situation, e.g. Baur 1957) does not provide a good indication of the likelihood of storm genesis." Maria Peristeri et al., "Genesis conditions for thunderstorm growth and the development of a squall line in the northern Alpine foreland", Jul. 10, 1999.