angst

Etymology

Borrowed from 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; Dutch angst is cognate. Compare Swedish ångest.

noun

1. Emotional turmoil; painful sadness.
   I've begun to regret that we'd ever met / Between the dimensions. / It gets such a strain to pretend that the change / Is anything but cheap. / With your infant pique and your angst pretensions / Sometimes you act like such a creep. 1979, Peter Hammill, Mirror images
   Harry's adolescence is theatrical and gaudy, and many of its key scenes have a lurid and camp quality that is appropriate to the exaggerated mood-shifting and self-dramatizing of teen angst. 2007, Martyn Bone, Perspectives on Barry Hannah, page 3
2. A feeling of acute but vague anxiety or apprehension often accompanied by depression, especially philosophical anxiety.

verb

1. (informal, intransitive) To suffer angst; to fret.
   In the second scene, the camera switches to the father listening, angsting, dying inside, but saying nothing. 2001, Joseph P Natoli, Postmodern Journeys: Film and Culture, 1996-1998
   She'd never angsted so much about her head as she had in the past twenty-four hours. Why the hell hadn't she just left it alone? 2006, Liz Ireland, Three Bedrooms in Chelsea