Zeitgeist
noun /ˈzʌɪtɡʌɪst/ — The defining spirit or mood of a particular era.
Definition
The general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of a particular time and place — the invisible set of assumptions and preoccupations that make a period feel distinctly itself.
Beyond the definition
Zeitgeist is harder to see from inside than from outside. You can only fully feel the spirit of an age once it has passed. But in retrospect — the particular anxiety of the 90s, the specific optimism of the 60s, the strange suspended quality of 2020 — the zeitgeist becomes unmistakable.
Origin & history
German: Zeit (time) + Geist (spirit, ghost). Popularized in 19th-century German philosophy, particularly by Hegel, to describe the spirit or mind of a particular historical period.
Example sentences
Illustrative sentences for learning, not verified community posts or sourced quotations.
The novel perfectly captured the zeitgeist of the late 1990s — the giddy unreality of the boom.
She had an intuitive sense of the zeitgeist — she always arrived at the culture's interest just before it became obvious.
The design felt dated because it had so perfectly embodied the zeitgeist of its moment.
How to use it
This entry uses a noun. Follow the examples for articles and singular or plural forms; not every noun takes “a” or “an.”
Choose “Zeitgeist” when the meaning fits your context: The general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of a particular time and place — the invisible set of assumptions and preoccupations that make a period feel distinctly itself.
Synonyms
spirit of the age, cultural climate, tenor of the times
Antonyms
timelessness, universality
Related words
Zeitgeist vs cultural mood
Cultural mood describes the general emotional atmosphere of a time. Zeitgeist is more analytical, referring to the specific intellectual and ethical defining spirit of an entire historical era.
Word in the Wild
Illustrative story: an imagined scene, not a documented event or interview.
In 2010, nobody was talking about loneliness as a public health crisis. By 2018, governments had appointed ministers for it.
Nothing dramatic had happened. The loneliness had always been there. But the cultural attention — the collective anxiety, the shared vocabulary — had shifted.
Nobody decided that loneliness would be the defining anxiety of that decade. It arrived, the way these things do, in the peripheral vision of a whole culture at once — and then suddenly everyone was talking about it and nobody could remember when they'd started.
Questions about this word
What does "Zeitgeist" mean?
Zeitgeist is noun meaning: The defining spirit or mood of a particular era.. The general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of a particular time and place — the invisible set of assumptions and preoccupations that make a period feel distinctly itself.
Which words express “spirit of this moment in time”?
Zeitgeist — The defining spirit or mood of a particular era.
Where does the word "Zeitgeist" come from?
German: Zeit (time) + Geist (spirit, ghost). Popularized in 19th-century German philosophy, particularly by Hegel, to describe the spirit or mind of a particular historical period.