List of pseudo-German words adapted to English
Encyclopedia
This is a list of pseudo-German words adopted from the German language
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 and adapted in such a way into English that their original meanings are no longer readily recognised by indigenous German speakers due to the new circumstances in which they were being used in English:
  • Blitz – ("The Blitz
    The Blitz
    The Blitz was the sustained strategic bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, during the Second World War. The city of London was bombed by the Luftwaffe for 76 consecutive nights and many towns and cities across the country followed...

    ") Chiefly British use, the sustained attack by the German Luftwaffe
    Luftwaffe
    Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....

     from 1940 to 1941 which began after the Battle of Britain
    Battle of Britain
    The Battle of Britain is the name given to the World War II air campaign waged by the German Air Force against the United Kingdom during the summer and autumn of 1940...

     (Luftschlacht um England). It was adapted from "Blitzkrieg
    Blitzkrieg
    For other uses of the word, see: Blitzkrieg Blitzkrieg is an anglicized word describing all-motorised force concentration of tanks, infantry, artillery, combat engineers and air power, concentrating overwhelming force at high speed to break through enemy lines, and, once the lines are broken,...

    " (literally "lightning war", meaning sudden, quick war), the sudden and overwhelming attack on many smaller European countries and their defeat by the Wehrmacht
    Wehrmacht
    The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...

    . "Blitz" (German for "bolt of lightning") has never been used in actual German in its aerial-war aspect and became an entirely new usage in English during World War II
    World War II
    World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

    .
    • In American football
      American football
      American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...

       a "blitz" occurs when any number of defensive players other than those on the defensive line abandon their normal position and attack the offensive backfield in the hopes of quickly outnumbering and overwhelming the offensive blocking scheme, before the quarterback or ballcarrier can react, possibly causing a loss-of-yards, sack, risky throw, incompletion, fumble, interception, etc. Since it can leave the defensive structure under-manned, a blitz is a high risk high reward defensive strategy, one which can be utilized against either the passing game, or the running game.
  • Hock
    Hock (wine)
    Hock is an English term for German wine, sometimes wine from the Rhine regions and sometimes all German wine. It is short for the now obsolete word hockamore. The term is a corruption of the name of the German town of Hochheim on the Main river in the Rheingau wine region...

    for a German white wine, derived from Hochheim am Main
    Hochheim am Main
    Hochheim am Main is a town in the Main-Taunus district of the state of Hessen, Germany. It is located near the right bank of the Main River three miles above the branch into the Rhine, as well as on the German Framework Road....

     in Germany
  • stein
    Beer stein
    Beer stein , or simply stein, is an English neologism for either traditional beer mugs made out of stoneware, or specifically ornamental beer mugs that are usually sold as souvenirs or collectibles...

    or beer stein – usually refers to a decorative beer mug made out of a non-transparent material; the term is derived from German Steinzeug "stoneware", a material that went out of fashion for beer mugs at the end of the 19th century, and has since been replaced by glass for hygienic reasons. Stein just means "stone" in German, where beer mugs are called Bierkrug (or Maßkrug or Maß for a one-liter mug).
  • (to) strafe
    Strafing
    Strafing is the practice of attacking ground targets from low-flying aircraft using aircraft-mounted automatic weapons. This means, that although ground attack using automatic weapons fire is very often accompanied with bombing or rocket fire, the term "strafing" does not specifically include the...

     – in its sense of "to machine-gun troop assemblies and columns from the air", became a new adaptation during World War I, of the German word strafen – to punish. In recent years "strafe" has referred specifically to the horizontal yaw
    Flight dynamics
    Flight dynamics is the science of air vehicle orientation and control in three dimensions. The three critical flight dynamics parameters are the angles of rotation in three dimensions about the vehicle's center of mass, known as pitch, roll and yaw .Aerospace engineers develop control systems for...

    ing motion of an airplane raking an area with machine-gun fire, and is now also used to mean "to move sideways while looking forward", so that many first-person shooter
    First-person shooter
    First-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...

     computer games have "strafe" keys.
  • Mox Nix – from German idiom "macht nichts". Often used by U.S. servicemen to mean "whatever" or "it doesn't matter".

See also

  • List of German expressions in English
  • Pseudo-anglicism
    Pseudo-Anglicism
    Pseudo-anglicisms are words in languages other than English which were borrowed from English but are used in a way native English speakers would not readily recognize or understand. Pseudo-anglicisms often take the form of portmanteau words, combining elements of multiple English words to create a...

  • Anglo-Saxon linguistic purism
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