Sometimes, we can't find the right words to express how we feel. Maybe that's why John Keonig created The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, a collection of terms that help express that which we struggle to put in words. Below, you will find a 25 words from this special dictionary that define emotions you've never known how to explain before.
1. Adronitis
Frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone.
2. Altschmerz
Weariness with the same issues, flaws, and anxieties that have been gnawing at you for years.
3.Anemoia
Nostalgia for a time you've never known.
The sadness that you’ll never really know what other people think of you, whether good, bad or if at all.
5. Chrysalism
The amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm.
6.Dysania
The state of finding it hard to get out of bed in the morning.
7. Exulnasis
The tendency to give up on trying to explain an experience to someone because they are unable to relate to it.
8. Finifugal
Trying to avoid or prolong the final moments of a story, relationship or journey.
9. Heartworm
A relationship or friendship that you can’t get out of your head, which you thought had faded long ago but is still somehow alive and unfinished.
10. Kenopsia
The forlorn atmosphere of a place that is usually filled with activity but is now abandoned and quiet.
11. Koi No Yokan
The sense that upon meeting someone, the two of you will fall in love.
12. Liberosis
The desire to care less about things.
13. Litost
A state of torment created by the sight of another’s misery.
The inexplicable urge to push people away.
15. Monachopsis
The subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place.
16. Nodus Tollens
The realization that the plot of your life no longer makes sense to you anymore.
17. Occhiolism
The awareness of the smallness of your perspective.
18. Opia
The intensity felt when looking someone in their eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable.
19. Pena Ajena
The empathetic embarrassment you feel for someone else’s humiliation.
20. Rubatosis
The unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat.
21. Sehnsucht
The inconsolable yearning in the human heart for something it cannot name.
22. Sonder
the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.
23. Tartle
The panicked hesitation before introducing someone who’s name you can’t quite remember.
24. Yū Yi
The desire to see with fresh eyes, and feel things just as powerfully as you did when you were younger-before expectations, before memory, before words.
25. Zenosyne
The sense that time keeps going faster.
