Feelings by name

Most entries here name a single feeling, and the distance between two neighbours is the point: das Unbehagen is vaguer than die Beklemmung, der Unmut milder than die Empörung. One entry names two things an English speaker would never file together. Die Befangenheit is the stiffness of somebody who feels watched — at a party, in an interview, on the first day in a new job. In a courtroom the same word means bias: a party may challenge a judge wegen Besorgnis der Befangenheit, because his impartiality is in doubt. The bridge is an older use that survives in formal German, in einem Irrtum befangen sein, to be caught in an error. The shy guest is caught in himself, the judge in a view formed before the hearing. The adjective splits the same way, so ein befangener Richter is not a nervous one, and befangen wirken at a reception says nothing about anybody’s fairness.