Götterdämmerung •
\gher-ter-DEM-uh-roong\ • : a collapse (as of a society or regime)
marked
by catastrophic violence and disorder; broadly : downfall
Examples: There were
those who worried that the latest civil war and attempted regime change would
end in Götterdämmerung for the small country.
"One wishes, of
course, for some sort of Götterdämmerung … in which the former victims rise up
to give the monsters a taste of their terrible medicine. That's what the movies
are for." — James Taub, Stars and Stripes,
August 23, 2014
Did you know? Norse
mythology specified that the destruction of the world would be preceded by a
cataclysmic final battle between the good and evil gods, resulting in the
heroic deaths of all the "good guys." The German word for this earth-shattering
last battle was Götterdämmerung.
Literally,
Götterdämmerung means "twilight of the gods." (Götter is the plural
of Gott, meaning "god," and Dämmerung means "twilight.")
Figuratively, the term is extended to situations of
world-altering destruction
marked by extreme chaos and violence. In the 19th century, the
German composer Richard Wagner brought attention to the word Götterdämmerung
when he chose it as the title of the last opera of his cycle Der Ring des
Nibelungen, and by the early 20th century, the word had entered English.
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