Meaning

noun an acute but unspecific feeling of anxiety; usually reserved for philosophical anxiety about the world or about personal freedom

originBorrowed from German Angst or Danish angst; attested since the 19th century in English translations of the works of Søren Kierkegaard. Initially capitalized (as in German and contemporaneous Danish), the term first began to be written with a lowercase "a" around 1940–44. The German and Danish terms both derive from Middle High German angest, from Old High German angust, from Proto-Germanic…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0