völkisch

English

Etymology

German völkisch. (Morphologically, compare English folkish.)

Adjective

völkisch

  1. Pertaining to a German populist, identity-nationalist or ethnonationalist ideology found since the late 19th century.

German

Etymology

Volk + -isch (initially sometimes spelled without an umlaut, as volkisch and e.g. volckisch),[1] initially as a translation of Latin popularis[2] and then of French national/New Latin nationalis. Morphologically, compare English folkish, Old English folcisc.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˈfœlkɪʃ/
  • (file)

Adjective

völkisch (comparative völkischer, superlative am völkischsten)

  1. (rare, now dated) pertaining to a people [since the 15th16th c.]
  2. (dated) national
    Synonym: national (see also staatlich, innerstaatlich)
  3. (dated, especially in white supremacist ideology and Nazism) ethnic, pertaining to a people (especially the German people) as a (putative) race (compare ethnisch)
  4. (by extension) populist, nationalist, ethnonationalist

Usage notes

The word often has a negative connotation now because of its propaganda usage in Nazi Germany, in which the meaning shifted from earlier “national” to “ethnic”.

Declension

Derived terms

  • deutschvölkisch

Further reading

References

  1. Attested with an umlaut since at least 1812 in Bragur, and also used in an 1811 letter by Fichte printed in Johann Gottlieb Fichte's Leben und literarischer Briefwechsel (1862).
  2. E.g. (as volckisch) in Lorenz Diefenbach's 1857 Glossarium Latino-Germanicum mediae et infimae aetatis.
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