zeitgeist means the spirit of the age; the taste, outlook, and spirit characteristic of a period. Lexicurio rates it Rare gem — a strength score of 84 out of 100.
Why this word is great
ZEITGEIST — [Noun] The defining intellectual, moral, and cultural spirit of a particular historical period. Unadapted borrowing from German Zeitgeist, from Zeit ("time") + Geist ("spirit, ghost"), literally meaning "spirit of the age." Unlike milieu, which maps the tangible physical and social terrain, or ethos, which denotes a timeless, guiding character, zeitgeist is the transient consensus of sensibility—the invisible weather of a decade. It is the crackle of existentialism in a postwar Parisian cafe, the disaffected, grunge-soaked apathy of the early 1990s, and the pixelated glow of collective anxiety on a billion screens. We are all temporarily clothed in it, until the climate changes and it becomes the ghost we once called air.
noun
- The spirit of the age; the taste, outlook, and spirit characteristic of a period.“She was anchored to that seat by the accumulated indignities of days gone by and the boundless aspirations of generations yet unborn. She was a victim of both the forces of history and the forces of destiny. She had been tracked down by the Zeitgeist—the spirit of the time.”