Effusive, often excessive enthusiasm, rapture, or sentimental infatuation.
Effusive, often excessive enthusiasm, rapture, or sentimental infatuation; in its older philosophical sense, fanaticism or zealous over-enthusiasm.
Gushing, sentimental, often passing adoration (it picked up a mid-20th-century “schoolgirl crush” sense). Heavier on excess, unrealism, and a whiff of the irrational than neutral enthusiasm; lighter and more effusive than the obsessive, compulsive limerence; warmer and more sentimental than mere infatuation. In philosophy (Kant) it shades toward delusory fanaticism.
From schwärmen “to swarm,” figuratively “to be enthusiastic, gush, rave,” + the suffix -ei (possibly with a diminutive/contemptuous force).
German Schwärmerei, from schwärmen “to swarm,” figuratively “to be enthusiastic,” related to Schwarm “swarm.” The -ei suffix's exact force is unclear (possibly diminutive/contemptuous).
Used critically in German philosophy by Kant, Schelling, and Hölderlin (Kant for delusory religious/moral over-enthusiasm bordering on fanaticism). Borrowed into English in 1845 (used by Carlyle and Ruskin), later acquiring the “schoolgirl crush” sense.
An 1845 English source called it untranslatable “because the thing itself is un-English” — the classic untranslatability trope; in practice “gushing enthusiasm,” “fanaticism,” or “infatuation” each cover one facet.