Words are life, and I don't mean that in a hashtag kind of way. Words dictate how we view the world, and how the world views us. You know that feeling you have when there is just a sense about something, but you can't describe it? I certainly do, and I hate it. If I don't have the words to explain what I'm feeling or thinking, how will anyone, or even me, know that it is real. This list may just save you from a few future vocabulary lapses.
1. Apricity
noun: the warmth of the sun in winter
This word conveys a sensation like no other. My friends in Illinois know what I'm talking about!
2. Bombinate
verb: to make a humming or buzzing noise
Just saying this word out loud gives you that buzz in your gut.
3. Cromulent
adjective: appearing legitimate but actually being spurious
Originally coined on The Simpsons in 1996, the word describes itself in being used for words that one would never know were made up.
4. Denouement
noun: the resolution of a narrative
Sometimes you might wish one of your friends would reach this point a bit sooner.
5. Ephemeral
adjective: lasting for a very short time
The best moments often go by the quickest. A shooting star, the first kiss, those realizations that all is as it should be in the world.
6. Epoch
noun: a particular period time of time in history or a person's life
Here's one of those words that easily inserts into normal conversation but makes you sound really intelligent.
7. Hiraeth
noun: homesickness for a home you can't return to, or that never was
This is a beautiful Welsh word with no English translation. It is pronounced HEAR-eth.
8. Limerence
noun: the state of being infatuated with another person
This word describes someone who desires an emotional connection above all else. The reciprocation of love is present with the word if nothing else.
9. Lucubrate
verb: to work in artificial light
For an action so common in today's world, the word is surprisingly uncommon.
10. Petrichor
noun: the pleasant, earthy smell after rain
For something so beautiful and wonderful, how can no one know the word for it?
11. Phosphenes
noun: the light and colors produced by rubbing your eyes
Maybe this word is a bit too scientific sounding to use daily, but it does put a name to the faces we know so well behind the curtain of our lids.
12. Sonder
noun: the realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own
I am overcome by sonder almost daily. How can it be? We are designed in a network so beautifully complex; it blows my mind. Sometimes it can be dangerous to think about this on a busy highway... just take my word for it.
13. Vellichor
noun: the strange wistfulness of used bookshops
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows describes this haunting term better than I ever could:
Bookstores associated with the sense of vellichor are "somehow infused with the passage of time—filled with thousands of old books you’ll never have time to read, each of which is itself locked in its own era, bound and dated and papered over like an old room the author abandoned years ago, a hidden annex littered with thoughts left just as they were on the day they were captured."
