[G., f. zeit time + geist spirit.] The spirit or genius that marks the thought or feeling of a period or age.
1881. A. B. Bruce, Chief End of Revelation, i. 23. Men under the influence of the eighteenth-century Zeitgeist, whether believers or unbelievers, were disposed to reduce the truths which God could be supposed to teach men in a special revelation to a very small number indeed—to three in fact, which may be called the Deistic Trinity.
1893. M. Arnold, Lit. & Dogma, v. 129. It is what we call the Time-Spirit that is sapping the proof from miracles,—it is the ‘Zeit-Geist’ itself.
1893. Nation (N. Y.), 5 Jan., 15/2. Rome has undergone radical changes, for the year 1870 has intervened, and the Zeitgeist has occupied and is rebuilding the city.
