Word of the Day

Zeitgeist

zeit•geist
Pronunciation: \TSYT-guyst; ZYT-guyst\
Function: noun
Etymology: Zeitgeist is from the German: Zeit, "time" + Geist, "spirit."

The spirit of the time; the general intellectual and moral state or temper characteristic of any period of time.

"Like other figures who seem, in retrospect, to have been precociously representative of their times, Kerouac was not simply responding to the Zeitgeist, but to the peculiarly twisted facts of his own upbringing."

— Jack Kerouac: The Beat Goes On, New York Times, December 30, 1979

Thanks to Constant Comment for today's WOTD entry