The saying goes that Eskimos have nearly 50 words for snow. It illustrates what a society comes into contact with, what they value or what their environment looks like. But what about the things we don't yet have words for? What's a word for that feeling that describes the exuberance over the first warm day in spring? Or a word for the internal monologue you have with yourself?
For those words, we turn to John Koenig. In 2006, Koenig was just a poetry student at Macalester College in Minnesota. Frustrated with the lack of words in the dictionary to explain certain feelings for his poems, he started to create them himself.
In other languages, there are words that describe emotions similar. Forelsket, for example is a Norwegian word for the feeling when first falling in love. Wabi-Sabi is the Japanese word for finding beauty in the imperfections. Iktsuarpok is an Inuit term for the growing anticipation that leads you to keep looking outside to see if anyone or anything is coming. All of these terms are 'untranslatable' for English speakers, because we simply don't have an equivalent word for it in the dictionary.
Since starting the project, which is now a Youtube Channel and a website, Koenig has come up with dozens of words, some of which have gained popular opinion and traction in the common English-speaking world.
'Sonder' is the most popular example. It is defined as "the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk."
Large and profound, the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows churns out words like this, which aim to describe complex thought, moments of clarity or significant emotional states. 'Sonder' has since gained traction with the online community (you've probably seen it once or twice if you spend a lot of time on Reddit or Tumblr), become the brand name of a bike distributor, and even been part of an album title.
But there are many others, as well. 'Morii,' for example, is defined as the desire to capture a fleeting experience, while 'zenosyne' is defined as the feeling that time is moving faster and faster. Interestingly so, this feeling is actually scientifically true, in a way. Because we experience so much in our first 18-25 years of life, it seems in our mind to move much slower. But as we get older, we start to get into patterns, and life moves faster, in a way. Our memory effects how we perceive time and experience.
Koenig's goal, with words like this, is to expand how we talk about what we feel. If there's a word for it, it can be experienced, felt and shared easier. It becomes concrete. Real.
What is a word you wish were real? What definitions could you create?
