Centuries ago, that word was understood to mean pinkish or the “outer skin of some humans.” But over the years, incarnadine has deepened and darkened. Now, it’s the color of blood, our shared liquid, the hue of our shared humanity.

These words, past their initial intrigue, offer us a looking glass into specific cultures. After all, for a culture to come up with a word, something must happen often enough. And for it not to exist in other cultures, it must not have passed that intangible threshold. This very concept means that with untranslatables, we very likely experiencing a... See more

“Duende” and “saudade” are kin. Both insist that anguish and ecstasy are not opposites but accomplices, that beauty doesn’t arrive without a wound. Lorca knew it.

In Romanian there’s a word that sits in the same constellation: “dor”. It has no true translation, a combination of longing, love, grief, but mostly that unbearable sweetness of absence... See more