fingerspitzengefühl

Lingwë: 'It’s not in the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Webster’s New Millennium Dictionary of English, or the American Heritage Dictionary. It’s not even in the OED! Despite that, one does find the word making its way into English, and not just recently, as in this notable political op-ed by William Safire from the New York Times, March 9, 1995. Safire’s loose definition is also a good starting point, where he describes Fingerspitzengefühl as “that combination of sure-footedness on slippery slopes and sensitivity to nuance familiar to mountain goats, safecrackers and statesmen.”'