The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Uncommonly Lovely Invented Words for What We Feel but Cannot Name

In learning about untranslatable words, we are getting to explore new worlds and through introspection, a window into ours and other people’s underlying “wiring”. We are not just loosely learning about trivial terms, but in certain cases, a lot about ourselves.

What I’m in search of is maybe hard to explain in a neat sentence, but, maybe, it’s some sense of resonance. You know when you’re reading and you’re like “Oh, this person is saying this thing I’ve been thinking or feeling forever, but didn’t know how to express in words?” That’s a beautiful feeling when you can see yourself more clearly through som... See more

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