Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A physical, biological, psychological, or symbolic configuration or pattern of elements so unified as a whole that its properties cannot be derived from a simple summation of its parts.
Wiktionary
- n. A collection of physical, biological, psychological or symbolic entities that creates a unified concept, configuration or pattern which is greater than the sum of its parts (of a character, personality, or being)
- n. shape, form
WordNet 3.0
- n. a configuration or pattern of elements so unified as a whole that it cannot be described merely as a sum of its parts
Etymologies
- German, shape, from Middle High German, from past participle of stellen, to place, from Old High German; see stel- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“They even psychobabble together: "We achieved what I call gestalt," says Gore.”
“The gestalt is just as important as the elements, though.”
Interview on Book Cover Design - Susan Wenger - by The Creative Penn | The Creative Penn
“The gestalt is what you really wanted to transmit, not the specific picture.”
“The question that arises from the evolution of the gestalt is whether something that is not human, is more than human, can be held to the same moral standards as regular humans.”
“Description: Transcript, 37 pp. Abstract: Ross begins with a discussion of his early involvement with John Ward on the Cape Cod project and his early experimentation in gestalt programming with Air Force and Emerson Electric Company programmers on the 1103 at Eglin Air Force Base.”
“But — one might coldly ask, with a certain gestalt bent — don’t the miserable survivors at least make better widgets?”
“In a clear departure from Brentano, Husserl and Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty brings in the idea of gestalt and dares to interrogate the lived-body.”
Merleau-Ponty takes the tradition of Western philosophy to its limits
“Showed up on PBS in the U.S., and was a fascinating exploration of the idea of gestalt, i.e., wherein the whole is viewed as more than the sum of its parts.”
“And so the document itself is an expression of the extent to which we're trying to build, what Vice President Gore would call a gestalt -- a situation in which the whole is truly greater than the sum of the parts.”
“When considered as a 'gestalt', a body of work, do the stories convey the original intention of the editor?”
MIND MELD: Behind the Scenes...How the Hottest Short Fiction Anthologies Are Created (Part 3)
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘gestalt’.
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Psychology
Chapter 1
rigorous, occurrence, maze, divers, intellectual, expansion, all in all, sensation, introspection, radical, orientation, nurture and 174 more...
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Words
phantasmagoria, eviscerate, avast, simulacrum, varicose, oblique, gestalt, ersatz, vernal, vivace, stellate, synecdoche and 330 more...
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Not in the Periodic Table
Words that sound like they might be the names of elements of the periodic table, but that aren't. Many of the words listed here were actually proposed as names for substances their creators thought...
tentorium, columbarium, nasturtium, deuterium, caladium, valerian, concordium, synangium, chorium, geranium, hymenium, pyrenium and 310 more...
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Not 250 Spelling Words Again
Yet more spelling words for intermediate to advanced spellers.
kyoodle, heimin, feis, menarche, cordwainer, gherao, zythum, accidie, anastomosis, boustrophedon, oleum, penicillin and 238 more...
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wallace
Remington, Windsor, prorector, wen, aver, mottle, seltzer, tepee, lapidary, effete, sotto, presbyopia and 355 more...
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tatterdemalion's list
chrysalis, colloquy, peroration, syncretism, dickering, gamelan, dictatress, adventurism, untenable, presumption of fa..., lovelorn, bawdily and 47 more...
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Sci-tech
cicatrix, senescence, varicose, gestalt, glossolalia, synesthesia, hypolactasia, hemoglobin, ametabolic, eutrophic, eutrophication, cryptid and 35 more...
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delightful descriptors
petrichor, omphaloskepsis, ouroboros, oneiric, flaneur, saunter, dishabituation, fractalization, eudemony, phosphorescence, holographic, umwelt and 136 more...
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the most beautiful
velvet, wainwright, susurrous, nutmeg, pegasus, tintinnabular, gossamer, lyricism, rococo, townlet, prince, nymph and 139 more...
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my GRE words
pedant, wizened, histrionic, logorrhea, frenetic, approbation, quibble, knell, acclivity, droog, prevarication, aplomb and 182 more...
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Faves
nepenthe, cupidity, anodyne, obdurate, doleful, obsolescent, quale, piquant, velleity, inchoate, disport, facile and 366 more...
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New words
Words that are new to me.
autostrada, gimlet, clyster, gravida, skelped, nacreous, susurrus, intransigent, puissant, turbid, plangent, fungible and 99 more...
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je les adore!
fusillade, foal, celestial, abattoir, byzantium, berlin, casablanca, babylon, balkans, albion, avalon, between the devil... and 471 more...
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Novel Words
Concise words to sprinkle in my prose.
apropos, perception, discombobulated, adumbrate, apogee, antinomy, sanguine, glyph, taciturn, aesthetic, truncate, coffee and 143 more...
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NTDW1
template, modal, sublingual, tandem, polycentric, septuagenarian, token, irrevocable, denotive, augural, aberrant, phlebotomy and 1188 more...
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List of words to expand my vocabulary
does what it says on the tin, and is severely needed.
indolent, insolent, idly, divulge, tattle, benign, roguish, daintily, idle, dowdy, sordid, wanton and 242 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for gestalt.
qroqqa Although the link between low compliance and dementia has yet to be comprehensively shown, he says, "there is a gestalt that it's broadly true."
—New Scientist, 13 June 2009
Here 'gestalt' seems to be used as something like "broad picture, rough consensus", a meaning new to me. Jun 15, 2009
kneedeep As in the "Gestalt" in your brain, which is a series of over a hundred patterns which allow your brain to do things such as find pictures is clouds, or see a box in this: , versus just two brackets. These patterns are often fooled by Optical Illusions. Apr 30, 2009
fbharjo in the sense of "to put in place" Jul 24, 2007