aufklarung (OUF-klay-roong) noun

   The Enlightenment.

[German : auf, up (from Middle High German uf, from Old High German.) +
Klarung, a making clear, from klaren, to make clear, from Middle High German
klaeren, from klar, clear, from Latin clarus.]

   "The idea that a profanity, especially one that was used as more than a
   casual expletive, could be used as a - pardon - legitimate verb was to me
   something of an Aufklarung, an enlightenment."
   Jon Hahn, A Deposit From Mr. Ed Pays Garden Dividends, Seattle Post -
   Intelligencer, Oct 26, 1999.

If memory serves me right, Caesar described the Germanii as a large, hardy,
ferocious people who inhabited the gloomy forests to the east of Gaul, wore
hardly any clothes and were perpetually on the move. Well, if he were able to
have a look around the seashores of Spain, Portugal or Italy today, he might
say exactly the same thing, although this time around the context would be
rather more peaceable. The descendents of those redoubtable forest-dwelling
savages are probably the world's number-one travelers today, still gripped by
an extraordinary wanderlust that sends them to the four corners of the earth
in apparent flight from the serious, orderly and slightly boring society they
have constructed for themselves in their geopolitical sandwich between the
Latins to the west and the Slavs to the east. The Germans have done a lot of
fighting and a lot of thinking about that sandwich over the centuries since
Caesar reported on them, and the words that have entered the English language
from their experience frequently reflect those military and intellectual
struggles: they are light on things like play, gastronomy, fashion and
frivolity but top heavy in philosophy, political thought and struggle in
general: serious, consequential stuff. If these words tend to be a little
ponderous and hard to pronounce, they are marvelously apt expressions of what
could never be expressed so well if our English tongue just minded its own
business and never wandered abroad to steal from others.         -Rudolph
Chelminski (rudychelminski@compuserve.com)

(This week's Guest Wordsmith, Rudolph Chelminski, is an American freelance
writer living in France.)

.............................................................................
Men are men before they are lawyers, or physicians, or merchants, or
manufacturers; and if you make them capable and sensible men, they will make
themselves capable and sensible lawyers or physicians. -John Stuart Mill,
philosopher and economist (1806-1873)

Q: Some time ago you featured a quote/word about x in AWAD. Could you resend 
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   words and quotes since the beginning of AWAD are available there.

Pronunciation:
http://wordsmith.org/words/aufklarung.wav
http://wordsmith.org/words/aufklarung.ram