There is a word for that. It’s German.

Tormented? Driven witless? Whipsawed by confusion? That’s how E. Jean Carroll introduces her advice columns, and as (among other achievements) a biographer of Hunter S. Thompson, you can bet she knows about all three of those things.

It’s too bad E. Jean’s not writing in German. When you’re anxious, confused, and at your wit’s end, the chances are good that the folks who brought us schadenfreude and zeitgeist have a word for you. I’m pretty sure I recently had a case of torschlusspanik when trying to decide between two freelance clients, but who knew the baby gave me futterneid and probably contributed to my strange lack of gemütlichkeit?

Torschlusspanik rocks. Not if you have it, of course. It literally means ‘gate shut panic,’ and it dates to the time of medieval walled cities. Back then, you would have been quite right to panic at the thought of being too late to make it inside the city gates before they closed in anticipation of an attack.

Nowadays, women are said to experience torschlusspanik as they get a bit older and fear they may not have children; middle-aged men are said to have a bad case of torschlusspanik when they leave their age-appropriate partner for a younger, ditzier woman. Investors desperately trying to get out of a bad stock as the share price sinks? Torschlusspanik.

The futterneid was more of a surprise. It’s jealousy about food. So futterneid can describe the feeling of eating with other people—often family—and being paranoid that their food is better than yours, or that you won’t get enough food. Other people’s futterneid may be paranoia, but mine is well founded, at least in restaurants. When we go out as a family, the baby has no interest in kid meals or the food we bring especially for her. She will only eat off my plate; it is amazing how much she can eat. She is like a bowling ball with legs. If we ate out more often, I could lose all the baby weight.

With a little less spannungsbogen, I would just get to the food before the baby and let her develop her own darn futterneid. Spannunsgsbogen merely means “arc of tension,” be it in archery, philosophy or literature. But in his Dune series (geek alert!), Frank Herbert used spannungsbogen to refer to the delay between desiring something and actually reaching to get it. To the extent that the word has been adopted in English, this is the prevailing definition.

Schlimmbesserung certainly doesn’t need Frank Herbert to advance its cause. There’s already way too much of it around. Schlimmbesserung is an "improvement" that actually makes things worse. The English equivalent is called Hutbert’s Law, but once I got used to pronouncing schlimmbesserung (just as it looks), I found it kind of catchy.

And as the holiday season approaches, consider a little space in your vocabulary for gemütlichkeit. One of my husband’s German cousins, Christa, tried mightily to explain this word to me several years ago. She’d smile, pull her sport coat tight around herself, and give herself a little hug. Cozy? Happy? Warm? Cheery? No, no, no, Christa said. Later, thanks to the Internet, I figured it out: Gemütlichkeit is a feeling of togetherness and warmth, often experienced while drinking with others. Who couldn’t use a little more of that? Cheers, everyone. —KW