Word of the Day for Tuesday August 2, 2005

Zeitgeist \TSYT-guyst; ZYT-guyst\, noun:
[Often capitalized] The spirit of the time; the general
intellectual and moral state or temper characteristic of any
period of time.

The best writers of that predawn era were originals who had
the zeitgeist by the tail.
--Gary Giddins, [1]Visions of Jazz: The First Century

As most critics and all professors of cultural theory note,
Madonna is nothing if not a skilled reader of the
zeitgeist.
--Techno 'rave' just the same old Madonna, [2]Chicago
Sun-Times, March 3, 1998

Besides, the zeitgeist seems to be working against any hope
of Hormel officials to limit...the usage of [the word]
'spam' on the Web.
--Gracious Concession on Internet 'Spam', [3]New York
Times, August 17, 1998

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, [4]New York Times,
December 30, 1979
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Zeitgeist is from the German: Zeit, "time" + Geist, "spirit."