DIRECTORY OF BEAUTIFUL WORDS
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INDEX OF COLLECTION BY THEMECOMPLETE COLLECTION OF WORDS​​INDEX OF WORDS BY LANGUAGE
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Words of Contemplation

“A comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there.” We all know this quote, but do we know what it means? It’s simple. If you are comfortable then you are not growing. If you are too comfortable and fighting change, then you are complacent. Steppibg, no leaping, outside your comfort zone and examining new and different ideas is how you grow. Dream big, think outside the box and ponder the profound.
WORD DESCRIBING THE THEME OF THIS LIST
NAMASTE – both a gesture and divine greeting that sends a message of peace to the universe in the hopes of receiving a positive message back. Namaste comes from the Sanskrit namas (bowing) te (to you) and is often translated to ‘I bow to the divine in you’. (Hindi)

WORDS THAT INSPIRE DEEP THINKING


​AMOR FATI - loosely translated as “love of fate” or “love of one’s fate”. It is used to describe an attitude in which one sees everything that happens in one’s life, including suffering and loss, as good or, at the very least, necessary. (Latin)

ASTRE - on the surface, it may seem this word describes a “star” because it refers to any celestial body. However, it doesn’t mean so in a strictly scientific or observational sense. Instead, it refers to any object that is “out of this world.” While “astre” technically covers objects like stars, it covers exceptional people, ideas, and experiences as well. (French)

ATARAXIA - a state of calm that all Stoic philosophers aspired to. It’s a lack of agitation that comes from understanding the ways of the universe, accepting fate, knowing what one can control and therefore focusing only on the things one can actually change. Very useful when the taxi is late. (ancient Greek)

AYURNAMAT - Stoicism; the possibility or approach of not worrying about things that cannot be changed. (Inuktitut)

AWARE - the bittersweetness of a brief and fading moment of transcendent beauty. (Japanese)

CHARMOLYPI - sweet, joy-making sorrow. a bittersweet moment to describe how you feel while celebrating the life of a loved one who recently died or waving goodbye to your toddler on their first day of school is probably bittersweet, but that doesn’t convey the depth of that peculiar happy-sad emotion quite like charmolypi does. (Greek)

DHARMA - signifies behaviors that are considered to be in accord with Ṛta, the order that makes life and universe possible, and includes duties, rights, laws, conduct, virtues and "right way of living". In Buddhism, dharma means "cosmic law and order", as applied to the teachings of Buddha and can be applied to mental constructs or what is cognised by the mind.
(Sanskrit)

GEIST - a German noun with a degree of importance in German philosophy. Its semantic field corresponds to English ghost, spirit, mind, intellect. Some English translators resort to using "spirit/mind" or "spirit (mind)" to help convey the meaning of the term. (German)

GOYA - refers to the transporting suspension of disbelief that happens when fantasy is so realistic that it temporarily becomes reality. It is usually associated with good, powerful storytelling. (Urdu)

HÜZÜN - the gloomy feeling that things are in decline and that the situation – often political in nature – will probably get gradually worse. Despite the darkness, there’s a joy in having the word to hand, sparing us from a personal sense of persecution and reminding us that our misfortunes are largely collective in nature (Turkish)

JIJIVISHA - refers to the strong, eternal desire to live and to continue living. It is usually used to talk about a person who loves life and always has intense emotions and desires to live and thrive. (Hindi)

JO-HA-KYU - is a concept of modulation and movement applied in a wide variety of traditional Japanese arts. Roughly translated to "beginning, break, rapid", it essentially means that all actions or efforts should begin slowly, speed up, and then end swiftly. (Japanese)

KOEV LI HALEV - refers to a certain kind of empathy. If you can't watch people you love suffering that you become so affected to the point of causing you serious physical pain then this is the term for you. (Hebrew)

LACIMAE RERUM - phrase for "tears of things." It derives from Book I, line 462 of the Aeneid (c. 29–19 BC), by Roman poet Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) (70–19 BC). Some recent quotations have included rerum lacrimae sunt or sunt lacrimae rerum meaning "there are tears of (or for) things." (Latin)

MAMIHLAPINATAPAI - derived from the Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego, listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the "most succinct word", and is considered one of the hardest words to translate. It refers to "a look that without words is shared by two people who want to initiate something, but neither start" or "looking at each other hoping that either will offer to do something which both parties desire but are unwilling to do." A romantic interpretation of the meaning also exists: "It is that look across the table when two people are sharing an unspoken but private moment. When each knows the other understands and is in agreement with what is being expressed. An expressive and meaningful silence." (Yaghan)

MAURI ORA - the essence that animates humans (Nogay)

MOKITA - comes from a language called Kivila, spoken in Papua New Guinea. It translates loosely as “the truth we all know but agree not to talk about.” (Kivila)

MONO NO AWARE - this phrase describes a particular sadness or sensitivity regarding the passage of time and the transience of life. In experiencing this sadness people are affected by the fleeting nature of specific things (love or experiences) and become wistful and reflective about the fact that everything must end. (Japanese)

MUSHIN - a Zen expression meaning the mind without mind, and is also referred to as the state of “no-mindness”. That is, a mind not fixed or occupied by thought or emotion and thus open to everything. (Japanese)

MUTTERSEELINALLEIN - loneliness so deep that it literally means that your mother's soul has left you. (German)

NAMASTE – both a gesture and divine greeting that sends a message of peace to the universe in the hopes of receiving a positive message back. Namaste comes from the Sanskrit namas (bowing) te (to you) and is often translated to ‘I bow to the divine in you’. (Hindi)

NATSUKASHII - identifies the feeling of evocative longing for something past: a nostalgia that's so deep that it reminds you that what you are missing will never come again. (Japanese)

NOSTALGIE DE LA BOUE - this phrase means to be “longing for the mud.” It’s the feeling of wanting a simpler life than the one we have. Perhaps you’re a lawyer or a doctor, and you drive past a flower shop and think that you’d much rather enjoy life as a florist. Maybe the pay is less as well as the prestige, but there’s a hope for happiness that having a much easier life could bring. (French)

PUNYA - merit,” “virtue”, “sacred", "good karma", among other things (Sanskrit)

SAUDADE - is a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one cares for and/or loves. It often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never be had again. It is the recollection of feelings, experiences, places, or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, and well-being, which now trigger the senses and make one experience the pain of separation from those joyous sensations. However it acknowledges that too long for the past would detract from the excitement you feel towards the future. Saudade describes both happy and sad at the same time, which is most closely translated to the English saying ‘bitter sweet’. (Portuguese)

​SEHNSUCHT – “life-longings”, an intense desire for alternative states and realizations of life, even if they are unattainable (German)

SEIJAKU - quiet (sei) tranquillity (jaku); silence, calm, serenity (especially in the midst of activity or chaos). (Japanese)

SHOUGANAI – a Japanese philosophy that states that if something is meant to be and cannot be controlled, then why worry about it? The idea is that worrying won’t prevent the bad things from happening; it will only deprive you of the joy of enjoying the good things in life. Translated literally, shouganai means ‘it can’t be helped’. (Japanese)

SIELVARTAS- soul tumbling and used in cases of grief or resentment. It can also refer to distress, woe, or pain. (Lithuanian)

TORSCHLUSSPANIK - literally gate-closing panic. The anxious, claustrophobic feeling that opportunities and options are shutting down; you have missed the boat, you have to get a grip, you are getting too old. (German)

TOSKA - at its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. Less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, or yearning. It may be the desire for somebody, of something specific, from nostalgia or love-sickness. At the lowest level it is ennui or boredom. (Russian)

UBI SUNT - literally "where are... [they]" is a rhetorical question taken from the Latin Ubi “sunt qui ante nos fuerunt” meaning "where are those who were before us?" Sometimes interpreted to indicate nostalgia, the ubi sunt motif is actually a meditation on mortality and life's transience. (Latin)

WABI-SABI - a world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete". It is a concept derived from the Buddhist teaching of the three marks of existence (sanbōin), specifically impermanence (mujō), suffering (ku) and emptiness or absence of self-nature (kū). (Japanese)

WELTSCHMERZ - literally world-pain, also world weariness, is a term coined by the German author Jean Paul. In its original meaning in the Deutsches Wörterbuch by Brothers Grimm, it denotes a deep sadness about the inadequacy or imperfection of the world. The translation can differ depending on context, in reference to the self it can mean "world weariness", in reference to the world it can mean "the pain of the world". (German)

YUGEN - a profound, mysterious sense of the beauty of the universe… gives a name to a mood in which one feels that the universe as a whole possesses a mysterious, elusive, but real, beauty. Moonlight, snow on distant mountains, birds flying very high in the evening sky and watching the sun rise over the ocean all feed this sensibility. (Japanese)
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