gestalt

Borrowed from German Gestalt (“shape, figure, form”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ɡəˈʃtælt/, /ɡəˈʃtɑːlt/, /-ˈst-/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /ɡəˈʃtɔlt/, /ɡəˈstɔlt/

gestalt (plural gestalts or gestalten)

1. A collection of physical, biological, psychological or symbolic elements that creates a whole, unified concept or pattern which is other than the sum of its parts, due to the relationships between the parts (of a character, personality, entity, or being)

   This biography is the first one to consider fully the writer's gestalt.

   • 1980, George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, chapter 15, in Metaphors We Live By:

     Thus one activity, talking, is understood in terms of another, physical fighting. Structuring our experience in terms of such multidimensional gestalts is what makes our experience coherent.

   • 1996, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, The Origins of Grammar, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press:

     ... depending on the kinds of speech children hear directed to them, they may first learn unanalyzed "gestalts" (e.g., social expressions like "What's that?" uttered as a single unit) instead of learning single words that are then freely recombined ...

   • 2003 August, Jay Kirk, “Watching the Detectives”, in Harpers Magazine‎, volume 307, number 1839, page 61:

     The clusters of behavioral gestalten... the probability factors... the subtypes of crimes... the constellations of criminal subtypes...

   • 2008, Jonathan Nasaw, Fear Itself:

     Obviously it was related to the entire gestalt of Simon's polyphobia and compensatory counterphobia. The boys used to watch horror movies on late-night television […]

2. (Can we verify⁽⁺⁾ this sense?) Shape, form.
   • 1977, John L. Hess, Karen Hess, The Taste of America, New York: Grossman:

     Mary did not approve of the Eleanor gestalt. "I been to Woonsocket S.D., Eleanor McGovern's hometown," she said, "and nobody there? I mean nobody? dresses like that."

   • 1998, David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, 1st Back Bay edition, Boston: Little, Brown and Co.:

     So different were our appearances and approaches and general gestalts that we had something of an epic rivalry from '74 through '77.

• Gestalt

• taglets

Borrowed from German Gestalt. Attested since 1623.

• Audio

  (file)

gestalt c

1. a figure ((shape of a) being, especially a human or human-like being)

   de centrala gestalterna i berättelsen

   the central figures (characters) in the story

   en lång gestalt skymtade i dimman

   a tall figure could be seen through the mist

2. (more rarely, somewhat poetic) a shape, a form (more generally)
3. a gestalt (a whole different from the sum of its parts)

More everyday-sounding compared to English gestalt in (sense 1), matching figure in tone as well.

• gestalta

• figur

• gestalt in Svensk ordbok (SO)
• gestalt in Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)
• gestalt in Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB)