Zeitgeist

 WORD OF THE DAY

zeitgeist / noun / TSYTE-gyste

Definition
1a: the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era
1b: the spirit of a time and place

Examples
But by the time a second season arrives, audiences might have already moved on; Squid Game captured the zeitgeist based almost solely on word of mouth.
— Dani Di Placido, Forbes, 19 Oct. 2021

"The lead single and opening track, 'Smells Like Teen Spirit,' has been streamed more than 1 billion times on Spotify. Its accompanying music video has been viewed more than 1 billion times on YouTube. 'Nevermind' is the defining album of an era and generation, an embodiment of the cultural zeitgeist of the 1990s."
— Hickory Daily Record (North Carolina), 28 Nov. 2021

Did You Know?
Scholars have long maintained that each era has a unique spirit, a nature or climate that sets it apart from all other epochs.
In German, such a spirit is known as Zeitgeist, from the German words Zeit, meaning "time," and Geist, meaning "spirit" or "ghost."