This week's theme: words borrowed from German. weltschmerz (VELT-shmerts) noun
World weariness; pessimism, apathy, or sadness felt at the difference between physical reality and the ideal state. [From German Weltschmerz, from Welt (world) + Schmerz (pain).] Today's word in Visual Thesaurus: http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=weltschmerz -Anu Garg (gargATwordsmith.org) "I hate being told to have a good time! I'll feel the weltschmerz if I want to." Mari Sasano; Things to Do Today; Edmonton Journal (Canada); Dec 3, 2005. Sponsors' messages: Ever wonder why we don't just talk, we chew the fat? Derivation, a hilarious game about word and phrase origins. A great gift! http://entspire.com Do you Sudoku? Get UniSudoku for the Mac and enjoy an intuitive interface with no more messy handwriting or erasing! http://www.unisudoku.com ............................................................................ What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it. -Herbert Alexander Simon, economist, Nobel laureate (1916-2001) Looking for word/quotation archives: http://wordsmith.org/awad/archives.html Unsubscribe, change address, etc: http://wordsmith.org/awad/subscriber.html Pronunciation: http://wordsmith.org/words/weltschmerz.wav http://wordsmith.org/words/weltschmerz.ram Permalink: http://wordsmith.org/words/weltschmerz.html This message was sent to "[email protected]".
