angst
/ˈeɪ̯ŋ(k)st/ noun, verb
Forms angsts angsting angsted
- noun Emotional turmoil; painful sadness; anguish.
- noun A feeling of acute but vague anxiety or apprehension often accompanied by depression, especially philosophical anxiety.
- noun (chiefly fanfiction) Fiction focusing on characters experiencing strong emotions and conflicts with other characters.
- verb (informal, intransitive) To suffer angst; to fret.
Etymology
Borrowed from German Angst or Danish angst; attested since the 19th century in English translations of the works of Søren Kierkegaard. Initially capitalized (as in German and contemporaneous Danish), the term first began to be written with a lowercase "a" around 1940–44. The German and Danish terms both derive from Middle High German angest, from Old High German angust, from Proto-Germanic *angustiz; related to anguish, Dutch angst, Swedish ångest.
Sources: Wiktionary — from the Wiktionary entry “angst”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details