Angst is a deep unfocused anxiety about existence. Teenage angst.
It is not fear of anything in particular, which is exactly what distinguishes it. English took the word for a philosophical idea and now uses it half-mockingly.
1nounangstA deep unfocused anxiety about existence.
“The whole album is four years of angst set to three chords.”
angst is a feeling.
ANGst → ANGer with nothing to be angry at
Not anger at any one thing in particular, just a low worry about everything at once that sits there all day and will not go away.
hooks ontoanger
German and Danish angst entered English in the nineteenth century through translations of Kierkegaard.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂enǵʰ-
Proto-Germanic
*angustiz
Old High German
angust
Middle High German
angest
Danish
angst
German
Angst
English, today
angst
German Angst or Danish angst; attested since the 19th century in English translations of the works of Søren Kierkegaard. Initially capitalized (as in German and contemporaneous Danish), the term first began to be written with a lowercase "a" around 1940–44. The German and Danish terms both derive from Middle High German angest, from Old High German angust, from Proto-Germanic angustiz; related to anguish, Dutch angst, Swedish ångest.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA