R
New! Rapunzel n.
a German fairy tale; the main character of that tale [< German Rapunzel, Rapunze, Rapünzchen, Rapünzlein "lamb's lettuce" < Medieval Latin rapuncium].
  • "That first day, the day when he lifted her up into his tree as if the breeze was blowing right through her, she'd felt like the heroine of some fairy tale, like Rapunzel—or no, that wasn't right. Like Leda maybe, Leda all wrapped in feathered glory." T.C. Boyle, Drop City, 2004, p. 39.
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Rassenhygiene n.
"race hygiene": racial cleansing [< Rasse "race" < French race "race" < Italian razza "race" + Hygiene "hygiene" < Greek hygieinós "promoting health" < hygiés "healthy, good"].
  • "To cite only the most flagrant example, the Third Reich's policy of Rassenhygiene offered what purported to be a rational, scientific solution to the problem of large numbers of inferior and undesirable people." Jonathan Marks, What It Means to Be 98% Chimpanzee, 2003, p. 277.
raster n.
from Raster "screen": a rectangular pattern of parallel lines composed of dots or pixels, grid [< German Raster "screen" < Latin raster, rastrum "rake" < radere "to scrape"]. This entry suggested by Jan Neidhardt.
  • "There are two basic approaches to character representation. The first is called a raster or bitmap font, where each character is represented by the on pixels in a bilevel pixel grid pattern called a bitmap (see Fig. 3-20)." Zhigang Xiang & Roy A. Plastock, Schaum's Outline of Computer Graphics, 2000, p. 45.
  • "The lines produced by vector drawing programs are based on mathematical formulas and usually print or plot better than those of raster images." Francis D. K. Ching, Architectural Graphics, 2002, p. 17.
  • "When proofing a page layout via a PostScript printer, the image and text data in the layout are processed separately by a Raster Image Processor (RIP) which is either on the same machine or a remote computer." Martin Evening, Adobe Photoshop CS2 for Photographers: A Professional Image Editor's Guide to the Creative Use of Photoshop for the Macintosh and PC, 2005, p. 552.
  • "Geospatial data is traditionally divided into two great classes, raster and vector." Michael Worboys & Matt Duckham, GIS: A Computing Perspective, 2004, p. 16.
  • "The process of working your way down the page in a series of horizontal sweeps is what a nerd would call raster-scanning, or just rastering." Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon, 2002, p. 434.
  • "The U.S. Geological Survey offers digital maps known as digital raster graphic (DRG)." Jack W. Peters, Complete Idiot's Guide to Geocaching, 2004, p. 207.
  • "Anamorphic squeeze: Often called raster squeeze, this is a neat trick that lets you watch anamorphic DVDs at full resolution on 4:3 aspect ratio, direct-view TVs." Danny Briere & Pat Hurley, Home Theater for Dummies, 2003, p. 158.
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Realpolitik, realpolitik, realpolitik n.
"realistic politics": practical politics, usually a euphemism for Machtpolitik. See also Ostpolitik, Weltpolitik and Westpolitik.
  • "By the start of the twentieth century, then, the motives that drove U.S. foreign policy seemed barely distinguishable from those of the other great powers, driven by realpolitik and commerical interests." Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, 2006, p. 282.
  • "The laws of academic Realpolitik indicated that if Dempsey didn't get quick promotion, he might leave, whereas Swallow would stay on, doing his job in the same dull, conscientious way whether he got promoted or not." David Lodge, Changing Places, 1975, p. 222.
  • "Realpolitik, however, was the principal reason for Constantinople's variety of nationalities." Philip Mansel, Constantinople: City of the World's Desire 1453-1924, 1998.
  • "That's how it looks to Moscow because the realpolitik is simple: Russia is weak; the new Eastern and Central European democracies are fragile; Russia has the size, resources and, historically, the inclination to rise and threaten again." Christopher Ogden, Time, May 26, 1997, p. 24.
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Reich n.
"empire" (< Middle High German rich, riche < Old High German rihhi, related to English -ric in bishopric]. See further example under Gleichschaltung.
  • "The leaders of Rome, Greece, the Third Reich, the British Empire, never saw the onset of decadence and internal rot in time; we can, and we must, if the United States is not to succumb to its internal hatreds and moral excesses, to be consumed by its own self-destruction." Carl Thomas Rowan, The Coming Race War in America: A Wake-Up Call.
  • The New Yorker"His [Bullock's] dramatic reconstruction of the high-stakes maneuvering for the Reich chancellorship, which brought Hitler to power in 1933, subverts the notion of some profound historical inevitability of Hitler by emphasizing the degree to which pure luck and shabby backstage scheming played a role in bringing him to office." Ron Rosenbaum, "Explaining Hitler", The New Yorker, May 1995.
  • "In temperament and outlook [German chancellor Helmut Kohl] is plainly not a Bismarck, whose Prussian blood-and-iron politics forged the Second Reich (the first was the Holy Roman Empire, long lost in medieval mists but not formally declared dead till 1806)." James Walsh, Time, Dec. 30, 1996-Jan. 6, 1997.
  • "'The story has nothing which makes the rightest fringe happy, nothing that is anywhere near a positive view of Hitler and the Third Reich,' comments Friedman." Ursula Sautter, "Can Der Führer Be Funny?", Time, Aug. 17, 1998.
  • "Then, as now, Austria had not fully come to terms with its role in the crimes of the Third Reich." Andrew Purvis, "Forward into the Past", Time, Feb. 7, 2000.
  • The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, William L. Shirer, 1991.
  • The 12-Year Reich: A Social History of Nazi Germany 1933-1945, Richard Grunberger, 1995.
  • Against the Third Reich: Paul Tillich's Addresses to Nazi Germany, Paul Tillich et al., 1998.
reichsmark, Reichmark, RM., r.m. n. [pl. reichsmarks, reichsmark, Reichmarks]
from Reichsmark "imperial mark".
  • "Suddenly, a barter economy based more on cigarettes and candy that [sic] on the nearly worthless Reichmarks left over from Hitler's Germany, was transformed into a throbbing industrial engine." Jordan Bonfante, "A German Requiem", Time, July 6, 1998, p. 21.
Reichstag n.
"imperial assembly": the former German assembly or parliament, the building in Berlin where it met [< Reich "empire" + Tag "day (of assembly)" < Middle High German tac < Old High German tag "daytime, time during which the sun shines", related to English diet meaning "assembly"].
  • "In an avowed protest against the new dome on the Reichstag, the fiend had attached an explosive device to the dog's collar." John Irving, The Fourth Hand, 2001, p. 55.
  • "Admiral Prince Henry of Prussia did likewise, and the first act of the Reichstag, after reassembling on Tuesday, was to pass a standing vote of condolence with the British people in their distress." Logan Marshall, The Sinking of the Titanic & Great Sea Disasters: Thrilling Stories of Survivors with Photographs and Sketches, 1912, p. 228.
  • "In Germany the Socialist party became the strongest faction of the Reichstag, and, in spite of differences of opinion among its members, it preserved its formal unity with that instinct for military discipline which characterizes the German nation." Bertrand Russell, Proposed Roads to Freedom, 1918, p. 56.
  • "The writer sat in the visitors' gallery of the Reichstag when the Socialists were protesting against the torturing of miserable Herreros in Africa, and he heard the deputies of the Holy Father's political party screaming their rage like jaguars in a jungle night." Sinclair Upton, The Profits of Religion, 1918, p. 154.
  • "In addition, it was suspected that construction was being started in advance of the dates scheduled by the German Navy Law--in advance even of the authorization of funds by the Reichstag." Jeffrey T. Richelson, A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century, 1997.
  • "In his Reichstag speech of 6 October 1939, Hitler reminded his audience that in 1919 Poland had taken German lands developed over many centuries." Deborah Dwork & Robert Jan van Pelt, Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present, 1996.
  • "In 1911 a measure to repeal paragraph 175 came to a floor vote in the Reichstag but was defeated." Somin LeVay, Queer Science: The Use and Abuse of Research into Homosexuality, 1996.
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rinderpest n.
from Rinderpest "cattle plague": an acute infectious disease of cattle, cattle plague.
  • "At very long intervals a species may have to face the onslaught of some entirely new menace, such as the introduction into Africa of rinderpest in the last decade of the nineteenth century, or the Black Death in Europe." Leslie Brown, "Population Control among Large Mammals", in Anthony Allison (Ed.), Population Control, 1970, p. 93.
  • "As a veterinarian formerly involved [in the Serengeti] in the annual vaccination of cattle against rinderpest (cattle plague), I would point out that distemper, rinderpest, and human measles, among others, are believed to be closely related viruses, capable of jumping from species to species." John F. Callear, Letter to the Editor, National Geographic, May 1995, unpaged.
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rollmops, rollmop n.
from Rollmops "rollmops": marinated herring fillet rolled around a pickle or onion as an hors d'oeuvre [< German rollen "to roll" < Old French roller, roler < Latin *rotulare "roll a wheel or disk" < rotulus + German Mops "pug dog" < Low German-Dutch mops < Low German mopen "to open or twist the mouth", Dutch moppen "to grumble, to be bad-tempered"]. This entry suggested by Britta.
  • "now the woman who's invited me, this donna, she's leaning against an amp, smoking one of these rollmop constructions/smiles through the hit, and I smile right back when she holds out the joint to me", Jeff Noon, Needle in the Groove.
Rottweiler, Microsoft Encarta 96 Encyclopedia
rottweiler n.
from Rottweiler "from Rottweil" a breed of dog named for the German town of Rottweil.
rucksack n.
from Rucksack "back sack": backpack. Incidentally, English knapsack is from the Dutch knapzak or Low German knappsack and has nothing to do with the Modern High German Knappe.
  • "His [Harry's] Muggle clothing, Invisibility Cloak, potion-making kit, certain books, the photograph album Hagrid had once given him, a stack of letters and his wand had been repacked into an old rucksack." Joanne K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7), 2007, p. 20.
  • "Shortly after arriving in Cork, we all lost each other momentarily and cursed Jan for putting his rucksack in with the baggage." James Hanlon, UK500: Birding in the Fast Lane, 2006, p. 62.
  • "There was water in his bota bag instead of wine (he'd learned that lesson the hard way, in the Sonoran Desert), and the Army surplus rucksack on his back contained a sleeping bag, a ground cloth, a few basic utensils and a damp copy of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men." T.C. Boyle, Drop City, 2004, p. 15.
  • "Mrs Weasley was still glowering as she kissed Mr Weasley on the cheek, though not nearly as much as the twins, who had each hoisted their rucksacks onto their backs and walked out without a word to her." J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Book 4), 2000, p. 65.
  • Infiltrator"He carried a rucksack slung over one shoulder." W.R. Thompson, Infiltrator (Star Trek: The Next Generation), 1996, p. 14.
  • "Sessine was dressed in plain, utilitarian clothes and carried a light rucksack across his shoulder." Iain M. Banks, Feersum Endjinn, 1994, p. 179.
  • "I lugged my rucksack over to find a young couple arguing in the front seat." Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe, 1991, p. 16.
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Knapp, Robbin D. 2009. "GermanEnglishWords.com: R". In Robb: GermanEnglishWords.com. Jan. 1, 2009.

 

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