zeitgeist: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for February 15 is:

zeitgeist \TSYTE-ghyste\ noun, often capitalized
: the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era

Example sentence:
Uncle Jerry reminisced about the free love and political and social activism that were all prominent in the zeitgeist of the 1960s.

Did you know?
Scholars have long maintained that each era has a unique spirit, a nature or climate that sets it apart from all other epochs. In German, such a spirit is known as "Zeitgeist," from the German words "Zeit," meaning "time," and "Geist," meaning "spirit" or "ghost." Some writers and artists assert that the true zeitgeist of an era cannot be known until it is over, and several have declared that only artists or philosophers can adequately explain it. We don't know if that's true, but we do know that "zeitgeist" has been a useful addition to the English language since at least 1835.

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