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Glite Dictionary
🇩🇪 A German custom 🗣️ A German word
Germanism

Germanism

8.6
A word, phrase, or custom taken from the German language
  • noun
  • /ˈɡɜrmənˌɪzəm/
  • Specialized
translation icon : germanismo
  • Many Germanisms are used in English to describe specific concepts that have no direct translation.

Examples

  • Certainly, Poe employs many Gallicisms, Latinisms, and some Germanisms.

    Academic text (1999)

  • The novel included several Germanisms that reflected the author's cultural background.

  • Speaking with Germanisms can help you understand the nuances of German culture.

Compounds

Pan-Germanism
9.9

A political movement to unite all people who speak German into one country

Surface Forms

Germanism singular
Germanisms plural

Morphology

Germanism = German (transparent) = German + ism

Productive formation where '-ism' marks a linguistic or cultural feature derived from 'German'; the specialized linguistic sense is predictable from the components.

Etymology

Germanism is also used for a word, phrase, or custom taken from the German language or culture and is made from German plus -ism, which here means 'a thing or style'. So a Germanism is something borrowed from German, like the words 'doppelganger' or 'sauerkraut', or a cultural idea adopted in another country.