Notes by LA2: While holocaust as a phenomenon is certainly associated with Nazi Germany, this particular term is not a German word. On the other hand, there are other German non-Nazi words that are used in English language, and it could be worth while to explain them. Should this be done from a separate page? I'm thinking of
angst (anxiety, feeling of despair) and schadenfreude
? (the joy over the failure of others). Then we have classes of [loan words]
? from other languages like ombudsman
? (a proxy official, from Swedish), and smorgasbord
? (an all-you-can-eat buffet of mostly cold dishes, also from Swedish).
By SoniC: I don't know if it makes sense to try and tell where all those different words came from. I mean, half of all English words are derived from Latin, French, even from Chinese (ketchup, for example) or Indian (shampoo, AFAIK). This is a science in and by itself. Maybe someone with far to much time on their hands can do such a page in the Linguistics section, but if you start something like that, you will end up having a complete dictionnary.
I propose to use this particular page for terms that are really related to Nazi Germany, i.e. terms you will find when reading reports, literature or whatever about the Third Reich. These can be German terms now also used in English or other terms used in the Nazi context.
But
Wikipedia is not a dictionary. It isn't a style guide, it isn't a collection of foreign borrowings, etc., etc. It is an
encyclopedia. Of course, very many words borrowed from foreign languages are also names of topics about which enyclopedias might well want to have articles--e.g., schadenfreude
? might include not just a definition of the term but what some psychologists have to say about it (I don't know what psychologists do have to say about it, if anything, though). --
LMS
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