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There are a number of German terms for which there are no useful English equivalents. Because of their usefulness, these terms -- called loan words -- have entered the English lexicon.

This list (with nearest synonyms) includes:

• Achtung (attention)
• Aha-Erlebnis/Aha-Effekt (autodidactic discovery)
• Angst (a feeling of anxiety, apprehension, or insecurity)
• Ansatz (one of the most used German loan words in the English-speaking world of science)
• Blitz ("lightning", came to be known as a metaphor for "extremely fast"/a explicably fast maneuver or movement.)
• Blitzkrieg (lightning war)
• Bratwurst (sausage)
• Doppelgänger (a ghostly counterpart of a living person)
• Drachenfutter (a gift brought home by a carousing husband to placate his wife, literally "dragon fodder")
• Ersatz (being a usually artificial and inferior substitute or imitation)
• Festschrift (a volume of writings by different authors presented as a tribute or memorial especially to a scholar)
• Fraktur (a typeface style resembling blackletter)
• Gastarbeiter (guest worker)
• Gemütlich (warmth, agreeably pleasant), Gemütlichkeit (cordiality, friendliness)
• Gesamtkunstwerk (comprehensive work)
• Gestalt (epiphany, a structure, configuration, or pattern of physical, biological, or psychological phenomena so integrated as to constitute a functional unit with properties not derivable by summation of its parts)
• Götterdämmerung (literally - twilight of the gods; a collapse (as of a society or regime) marked by catastrophic violence and disorder)
• Hausfrau (housewife)
• Hinterland (countryside far away from urban areas)
• Kaffeeklatsch (an informal social gathering for coffee and conversation)
• Kindergarten (nursery, lit. Garden of children -- This is probably the best known German word in the whole wide world.)
• Lebensraum (space required for life, growth, or activity, compare to Elbow room, Living-room')
• Loanword (a word taken into another language; ironically a Loanword, a calque of the German Lehnwort)
• Leitmotiv (a dominant recurring theme)
• Lust (extreme wanting, desire; from Old English term, meaning "desire"; ultimately from a Germanic word which came from High German lust "wish, desire". In German, the word lust denotes simply "desire")
• Meister ((master/teacher, Ex. Mr.; compare to Maestro) -- See also the words from Todesfuge: "Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland" by Paul Celan)
• Mittelschmerz (middle pain, used to refer to ovulation pain)
• Ostalgie (nostalgia for the former Eastern Bloc)
• Ohrwurm (a catchy tune that gets stuck in one's head)
• Poltergeist (a noisy usually mischievous ghost held to be responsible for unexplained noises)
• Putsch (revolution; a secretly plotted and suddenly executed attempt to overthrow a government)
• Realpolitik (politics based on practical and material factors rather than on theoretical or ethical objectives)
• Rucksack (backpack)
• Sauerkraut (sour cabbage)
• Schadenfreude (sadism, enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others)
• Sturm und Drang (lit. "storm and stress"; turmoil)
• Über (ultra, "very"), Übermensch (superman/superhuman)
• Überfremdung claim that some aspect of a culture has been too heavily penetrated by foreign influence
• Ursprache (proto-language)
• Waldsterben (deforestation)
• Wanderlust (strong longing for or impulse toward wandering)
• Weltanschauung (a comprehensive conception or apprehension of the world especially from a specific standpoint)
• Weltschmerz (lit. "world-pain"; mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state of the world with an ideal state)
• Wirtschaftswunder (designates the upturn experienced in the West German and Austrian economies after the Second World War)
• Wunderkind (a child prodigy)
• Zeitgeist ("spirit of the times"; actually a German calque originating from a Shakespeare translation)

See also

• List of German expressions in English
• German placename etymology
• German name
• List of German given names
• List of Spanish words of Germanic origin
• List of Portuguese words of Germanic origin