gestalt

plural gestalts · plural gestalten · alternative Gestalt

1. human sciencesA collection of physical, biological, psychological or symbolic elements that creates a whole, unified concept or pattern which is other than the sum of its parts due to the relationships between the parts (of a character, personality, entity, or being). [simplified] An organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts.

   So different were our appearances and approaches and general gestalts that we had something of an epic rivalry from '74 through '77.

   1998, David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, 1st Back Bay edition, Boston: Little, Brown and Co.

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   Mary did not approve of the Eleanor gestalt. "I been to Woonsocket S.D., Eleanor McGovern's hometown," she said, "and nobody there? I mean nobody? dresses like that."

   1977, John L. Hess, Karen Hess, The Taste of America, New York: Grossman

   Thus one activity, talking, is understood in terms of another, physical fighting. Structuring our experience in terms of such multidimensional gestalts is what makes our experience coherent.

   1980, George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, chapter 15, in Metaphors We Live By

   […] depending on the kinds of speech children hear directed to them, they may first learn unanalyzed "gestalts" (e.g., social expressions like "What's that?" uttered as a single unit) instead of learning single words that are then freely recombined […]

   1996, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, The Origins of Grammar, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press

   The clusters of behavioral gestalten... the probability factors... the subtypes of crimes... the constellations of criminal subtypes...

   2003 August 28, Jay Kirk, “Watching the Detectives”, in Harpers Magazine, volume 307, number 1839, page 61

   Obviously it was related to the entire gestalt of Simon's polyphobia and compensatory counterphobia. The boys used to watch horror movies on late-night television […]

   2008, Jonathan Nasaw, Fear Itself

plural Gestalts · plural Gestalten

1. Alternative letter-case form of gestalt.