DIRECTORY OF BEAUTIFUL WORDS
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About Site | What’s New? | Feedback | Help
My Writing Portfolio at www.bykairos.com MAIN DIRECTORY
- Word Lists Home | Featured Word Lists
- Word and Literary Reference Corner language and writing reference resources
- The Beauty of Language and Words - the words we discover and find through reading
- Weaving Meaning in a Web of Words - the words we use for communicating & storytelling
- The Universe and World We Live In - the words in exotic languages new to us
- People, Places and Things - the words we use to understand ourselves & the world around us
- The Colors of Our Creativity - the words we use to create and innovate
- The Dark Side of the Moon - the words of a darker nature
- My Books: Series of Beautiful Words.
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THEY SHAPE US. THEY DO NOT DEFINE US.
FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS - Home - Index
PONDERING THE PHOBIA ~ The Words of Fear
Complete dictionary of Phobias to peruse and a Library of self care articles on panic and anxiety extracted from my books.
Fear Dictionary ~~ Fear Library
Story of Soulmates - View | File
Greek Origins of Erotic Vocabulary ~ View | File
The Defining Story of the Kiss ~ View | File
- Feelings You Can’t Define - Obscure Sorrows
- Feelings You Have No Word For
- Spin the Wheel of Emotions
- Universal Words for Happiness
- Perfect Happiness,, Serenity & Sweetness
- Neither Good Nor Bad - Words of Apathy
- Feelings from the Dark Side of the Moon - darker emotions and feelings - Index
- Untranslatable Words for Emotions - universal feelings in words of the world - Index
- Capacity for Love -love, affection & relationships - Love Index ~ Sexy Index
PONDERING THE PHOBIA ~ The Words of Fear
Complete dictionary of Phobias to peruse and a Library of self care articles on panic and anxiety extracted from my books.
Fear Dictionary ~~ Fear Library
Story of Soulmates - View | File
Greek Origins of Erotic Vocabulary ~ View | File
The Defining Story of the Kiss ~ View | File
ASSOCIATED BOOKS
RIDING THE CRAZY TRAIN
Guide to Understanding Your Emotions
Your feelings and emotions matter. They mean something to you. They affect your life. They are a part of you. It’s normal. The secret is to own them and not let them own you. They do not define us.
PREVIEW ONLINE | DOWNLOAD BOOK
Your feelings and emotions matter. They mean something to you. They affect your life. They are a part of you. It’s normal. The secret is to own them and not let them own you. They do not define us.
PREVIEW ONLINE | DOWNLOAD BOOK
SECRETS OF THE HEART
Defining and Understanding the Meaning of Attraction, Lust, Affection, Love, Sex
Love. We think about it, sing about it, dream about it, worry about it. When we don’t have it, we search for it; when we discover it, we don’t know what to do with it; and when we have it, we fear losing it. How to define it? Do we understand it?
PREVIEW ONLINE | DOWNLOAD BOOK
Love. We think about it, sing about it, dream about it, worry about it. When we don’t have it, we search for it; when we discover it, we don’t know what to do with it; and when we have it, we fear losing it. How to define it? Do we understand it?
PREVIEW ONLINE | DOWNLOAD BOOK
BE MINDFUL BE WELL
Series of mindfulness centered self care
Learn the principles of compassionate self care and how to integrate mindfulness principles in the care and growth of your emotional health.
LEARN MORE AND DOWNLOAD
Learn the principles of compassionate self care and how to integrate mindfulness principles in the care and growth of your emotional health.
LEARN MORE AND DOWNLOAD
FEELINGS
You Have But Can’t Define
There is a Word For That Feeling.
You are not alone
From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
Everything you think of is close but not exactly it. Not being able to define your feelings because they seem so abstract can make you feel like you are the only one who feels this way. But you are not. Let me introduce you to The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig. In 2006, Koening was in college and writing poetry, when inspiration hit and he had an idea for a dictionary of unusual words describing various feelings that we have, but can’t explain.
Unusual emotions routinely swell from within us, and they aren't easily named. It is important to stop, examine them, and try to put them into words. "When we label an emotion, it might make it more manageable," says Seth J. Gillihan, a clinical assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. "It might not change the emotion, but it does allow us the possibility of choosing our response."
Emotions don't come in neat little boxes. They don’t have names until they are defined and sometimes we can’t define what we can’t adequately capture.
If something is so powerful or emotional that you can't even describe it, it’s ineffable. Ineffable ideas and emotions are difficult to put into words. Parents might feel an ineffable sadness and pride when watching their youngest child graduate from high school. This word comes from the adjective effable, which means “something that can lawfully be expressed in words.”
Your emotions, which can’t be mapped out in the brain, are often blends of a lot of different things you're experiencing. These can be defined as mixed feelings and we can’t accurately measure a subjective concept such as a mixed feeling. We can break it down into core elements - like a complex mixture of anger, grief and surprisingly, hope. The best we can do is capture the moment, process it to determine the core elements and then work on easing their impact. It we can put a name to it and accept we are not alone.
Once you have poked around and tried to find meaning in your emotions, or even named them, you can do something about it. You might make a change in your life, so that you don't experience such an intense complexity like a mixed emotion. With time and effort, you can accept it and become able to simply sit quietly with it without fear or judgement. Running from emotions is much more draining than actually acknowledging and feeling them.
Mindfulness meditation can help you with this. Check out my work on defining and practicing this powerful meditative practice. It can help you learn to deal with any emotions by focusing your thoughts in a more meaningful way.
Unusual emotions routinely swell from within us, and they aren't easily named. It is important to stop, examine them, and try to put them into words. "When we label an emotion, it might make it more manageable," says Seth J. Gillihan, a clinical assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. "It might not change the emotion, but it does allow us the possibility of choosing our response."
Emotions don't come in neat little boxes. They don’t have names until they are defined and sometimes we can’t define what we can’t adequately capture.
If something is so powerful or emotional that you can't even describe it, it’s ineffable. Ineffable ideas and emotions are difficult to put into words. Parents might feel an ineffable sadness and pride when watching their youngest child graduate from high school. This word comes from the adjective effable, which means “something that can lawfully be expressed in words.”
Your emotions, which can’t be mapped out in the brain, are often blends of a lot of different things you're experiencing. These can be defined as mixed feelings and we can’t accurately measure a subjective concept such as a mixed feeling. We can break it down into core elements - like a complex mixture of anger, grief and surprisingly, hope. The best we can do is capture the moment, process it to determine the core elements and then work on easing their impact. It we can put a name to it and accept we are not alone.
Once you have poked around and tried to find meaning in your emotions, or even named them, you can do something about it. You might make a change in your life, so that you don't experience such an intense complexity like a mixed emotion. With time and effort, you can accept it and become able to simply sit quietly with it without fear or judgement. Running from emotions is much more draining than actually acknowledging and feeling them.
Mindfulness meditation can help you with this. Check out my work on defining and practicing this powerful meditative practice. It can help you learn to deal with any emotions by focusing your thoughts in a more meaningful way.
Do you ever feel something that you can’t explain and struggle endlessly grasping for the right word that describes it?
The interesting new words, or what we call neologisms, were created by John himself and are based on his etymological research of prefixes, suffixes, and word roots from various languages. The terms are often based on "feelings of existentialism" and are meant to "fill a hole in the language", often from reader contributions of specific emotions.
“Each word actually means something etymologically, having been built from one of a dozen languages or renovated jargon,” says Koenig.
The purpose of this project? As Koening himself puts it “they [the words] were not necessarily intended to be used in conversation but to exist for their own sake; to give a semblance of order to a dark continent."
When you are done with Part 1 click to Part 2 for more obscure words for feelings that have been in the lexicon for a long time and provide the same sense of relief that you are not alone as the words in Koenig’s collection do.
Scroll down to read some of the unusual yet perfect words from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows but first check out my favorite entry.
“Each word actually means something etymologically, having been built from one of a dozen languages or renovated jargon,” says Koenig.
The purpose of this project? As Koening himself puts it “they [the words] were not necessarily intended to be used in conversation but to exist for their own sake; to give a semblance of order to a dark continent."
When you are done with Part 1 click to Part 2 for more obscure words for feelings that have been in the lexicon for a long time and provide the same sense of relief that you are not alone as the words in Koenig’s collection do.
Scroll down to read some of the unusual yet perfect words from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows but first check out my favorite entry.
XENO
n. the smallest measurable unit of human connection, typically exchanged between passing strangers—a flirtatious glance, a sympathetic nod, a shared laugh about some odd coincidence—moments that are fleeting and random but still contain powerful emotional nutrients that can alleviate the symptoms of feeling alone.
The Feelings You Can’t Define
Part I: Obscure Sorrows
ALTSCHMERZ
n. weariness with the same old issues that you’ve always had—the same boring flaws and anxieties you’ve been gnawing on for years, which leaves them soggy and tasteless and inert, with nothing interesting left to think about, nothing left to do but spit them out and wander off to the backyard, ready to dig up some fresher pain you might have buried long ago.
ANCHORAGE
The desire to hold on to time as it passes, like trying to keep your grip on a rock in the middle of a river, feeling the weight of the current against your chest while your elders float on downstream, calling over the roar of the rapids, “Just let go—it’s okay—let go.
CHRYSALISM
The amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm, listening to waves of rain pattering against the roof like an argument upstairs, whose muffled words are unintelligible but whose crackling release of built-up tension you understand perfectly.
CATOPTRIC TRISTESSE
The sadness that you’ll never really know what other people think of you, whether good, bad or if at all—that although we reflect on each other with the sharpness of a mirror, the true picture of how we’re coming off somehow reaches us softened and distorted, as if each mirror was preoccupied with twisting around, desperately trying to look itself in the eye.
ECSTATIC SHOCK
The surge of energy upon catching a glance from someone you like—a thrill that starts in your stomach, arcs up through your lungs and flashes into a spontaneous smile—which scrambles your ungrounded circuits and tempts you to chase that feeling with a kite and a key.
ELLIPSISM
The sadness that you’ll never be able to know how history will turn out, that you’ll dutifully pass on the joke of being alive without ever learning the punchline—the name of the beneficiary of all human struggle, the sum of the final payout of every investment ever made in the future—which may not suit your sense of humor anyway and will probably involve how many people it takes to change a lightbulb.
EXULANSIS
The tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it—whether through envy or pity or simple foreignness—which allows it to drift away from the rest of your life story, until the memory itself feels out of place, almost mythical, wandering restlessly in the fog, no longer even looking for a place to land.
FATA ORGANA
A flash of real emotion glimpsed in someone sitting across the room, idly locked in the middle of some group conversation, their eyes glinting with vulnerability or quiet anticipation or cosmic boredom—as if you could see backstage through a gap in the curtains, watching stagehands holding their ropes at the ready, actors in costume mouthing their lines, fragments of bizarre sets waiting for some other production.
GNOSSIENNE
A moment of awareness that someone you’ve known for years still has a private and mysterious inner life, and somewhere in the hallways of their personality is a door locked from the inside, a stairway leading to a wing pof BB house that you’ve never fully explored—an unfinished attic that will remain maddeningly unknowable to you, because ultimately neither of you has a map, or a master key, or any way of knowing exactly where you stand.
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, like an abandoned campsite whose smoldering embers still have the power to start a forest fire.
KAIROSCLEROSIS
The moment you realize that you’re currently happy—consciously trying to savor the feeling—which prompts your intellect to identify it, pick it apart and put it in context, where it will slowly dissolve until it’s little more than an aftertaste.
KENOPSIA
The eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that’s usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet—a school hallway in the evening, an unlit office on a weekend, vacant fairgrounds—an emotional afterimage that makes it seem not just empty but hyper-empty, with a total population in the negative, who are so conspicuously absent they glow like neon signs.
LIBEROSIS
The desire to care less about things—to loosen your grip on your life, to stop glancing behind you every few steps, afraid that someone will snatch it from you before you reach the end zone—rather to hold your life loosely and playfully, like a volleyball, keeping it in the air, with only quick fleeting interventions, bouncing freely in the hands of trusted friends, always in play.
LILO
A friendship that can lie dormant for years only to pick right back up instantly, as if no time had passed since you last saw each other.
MAL DE COUCOU
A phenomenon in which you have an active social life but very few close friends—people who you can trust, who you can be yourself with, who can help flush out the weird psychological toxins that tend to accumulate over time—which is a form of acute social malnutrition in which even if you devour an entire buffet of chitchat, you’ll still feel pangs of hunger.
MAUERBAUERTRAURIGKEIT
The inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends who you really like—as if all your social tastebuds suddenly went numb, leaving you unable to distinguish cheap politeness from the taste of genuine affection, unable to recognize its rich and ambiguous flavors, its long and delicate maturation, or the simple fact that each tasting is double-blind.
MIMEOMIA
The frustration of knowing how easily you fit into a stereotype, even if you never intended to, even if it’s unfair, even if everyone else feels the same way—each of us trick-or-treating for money and respect and attention, wearing a safe and predictable costume because we’re tired of answering the question, “What are you supposed to be?”
MIDDING
The feeling the tranquil pleasure of being near a gathering but not quite in it—hovering on the perimeter of a campfire, chatting outside a party while others dance inside, resting your head in the backseat of a car listening to your friends chatting up front—feeling blissfully invisible yet still fully included, safe in the knowledge that everyone is together and everyone is okay, with all the thrill of being there without the burden of having to be.
NODUS TOLLENS
The realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore—that although you thought you were following the arc of the story, you keep finding yourself immersed in passages you don’t understand, that don’t even seem to belong in the same genre—which requires you to go back and reread the chapters you had originally skimmed to get to the good parts, only to learn that all along you were supposed to choose your own adventure.
PARO
The feeling that no matter what you do is always somehow wrong—that any attempt to make your way comfortably through the world will only end up crossing some invisible taboo—as if there’s some obvious way forward that everybody else can see but you, each of them leaning back in their chair and calling out helpfully, colder, colder, colder.
RIGOR SAMSA
A kind of psychological exoskeleton that can protect you from pain and contain your anxieties, but always ends up cracking under pressure or hollowed out by time—and will keep growing back again and again, until you develop a more sophisticated emotional structure, held up by a strong and flexible spine, built less like a fortress than a cluster of treehouses.
RUCKKEHRUNRUHE
The feeling of returning home after an immersive trip only to find it fading rapidly from your awareness—to the extent you have to keep reminding yourself that it happened at all, even though it felt so vivid just days ago—which makes you wish you could smoothly cross-dissolve back into everyday life, or just hold the shutter open indefinitely and let one scene become superimposed on the next, so all your days would run together and you’d never have to call cut.
SCABULOUS
Proud of a scar on your body, which is an autograph signed to you by a world grateful for your continued willingness to play with her, even when you don’t feel like it.
SEMAPHORISM
A conversational hint that you have something personal to say on the subject but don’t go any further—an emphatic nod, a half-told anecdote, an enigmatic ‘I know the feeling'—which you place into conversations like those little flags that warn diggers of something buried underground: maybe a cable that secretly powers your house, maybe a fiberoptic link to some foreign country.
SILIENCE
The kind of unnoticed excellence that carries on around you every day, unremarkably—the hidden talents of friends and coworkers, the fleeting solos of subway buskers, the slapdash eloquence of anonymous users, the unseen portfolios of aspiring artists—which would be renowned as masterpieces if only they’d been appraised by the cartel of popular taste, who assume that brilliance is a rare and precious quality, accidentally overlooking buried jewels that may not be flawless but are still somehow perfect.
THE MEANTIME
The moment of realization that your quintessential future self isn’t ever going to show up, which forces the role to fall upon the understudy, the gawky kid for whom nothing is easy, who spent years mouthing their lines in the wings before being shoved into the glare of your life, which is already well into its second act.
VEMODALEN
The frustration of photographing something amazing when thousands of identical photos already exist—the same sunset, the same waterfall, the same curve of a hip, the same closeup of an eye—which can turn a unique subject into something hollow and pulpy and cheap, like a mass-produced piece of furniture you happen to have assembled yourself.
WALDOSIA
A condition characterized by scanning faces in a crowd looking for a specific person who would have no reason to be there, which is your brain’s way of checking to see whether they’re still in your life, subconsciously patting its emotional pockets before it leaves for the day.
WYTAI
A feature of modern society that suddenly strikes you as absurd and grotesque—from zoos and milk-drinking to organ transplants, life insurance, and fiction—part of the faint background noise of absurdity that reverberates from the moment our ancestors first crawled out of the slime but could not for the life of them remember what they got up to do.
Check it out for yourself.
Visit The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows for more amazing words defining real feelings felt by us all.
THEY SHAPE US. THEY DO NOT DEFINE US.
EMOTIONS AND FEELINGS - Home
Untranslatable Words for Emotions - universal words of the feelings with no English equivalent
Capacity for Love - a look at love, affection, sex and relationships.
FEATURED LISTS
PONDERING THE PHOBIA
Complete. collection of phobias to peruse and ponder and if you need help, check the library for the associated content from my books and self care guides on managing fear and anxiety.
Story of Soulmates - View | File
Greek Origins of Erotic Vocabulary ~ View | File
The Defining Story of the Kiss ~ View | File
- Feelings You Can’t Define - Obscure Sorrows
- Feelings You Have No Word For
- Universal Words for Happiness
- Perfect Happiness,, Serenity & Sweetness
- Neither Good Nor Bad - Words of Apathy
Untranslatable Words for Emotions - universal words of the feelings with no English equivalent
Capacity for Love - a look at love, affection, sex and relationships.
FEATURED LISTS
PONDERING THE PHOBIA
Complete. collection of phobias to peruse and ponder and if you need help, check the library for the associated content from my books and self care guides on managing fear and anxiety.
Story of Soulmates - View | File
Greek Origins of Erotic Vocabulary ~ View | File
The Defining Story of the Kiss ~ View | File
A BEAUTIFUL WORD ... a vocabulary site for logophiles, writers and word lovers that is part of
A SERIES OF BEAUTIFUL WORDS
Collection of Vocabulary Books, Sites and Resources
Series Homepage | View Sites | Download Books
Words are also posted on twitter under the hashtags #beautifulwords and #wordoftheday and shared visually on pinterest bulletin boards
ABOUT SITE | SITEMAPS | SEARCH | FEEDBACK
Content by Kairos ~ @kairosoflife
Homepage | Portfolio | Contact
Original content © 2021 Copyright, Kairos
A SERIES OF BEAUTIFUL WORDS
Collection of Vocabulary Books, Sites and Resources
Series Homepage | View Sites | Download Books
Words are also posted on twitter under the hashtags #beautifulwords and #wordoftheday and shared visually on pinterest bulletin boards
ABOUT SITE | SITEMAPS | SEARCH | FEEDBACK
Content by Kairos ~ @kairosoflife
Homepage | Portfolio | Contact
Original content © 2021 Copyright, Kairos
