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Rare Or Specialized Emotions & Words For Them

gattino

gattino

Justified & Ancient
Joined
Jul 30, 2003
Messages
2,525
I've no idea if these are genuine words, but you'll all recognise the feelings...

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https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.ne...=799cfb9146a5f2f655b08b6db37801c5&oe=55E7DAB3

Link is dead. No archived version found. An online item with the same title was posted a few months after this post, and it appears to be the same thing. The source is given as the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig. Here's the text of the apparent duplicate 2015 presentation.

1. Sonder
The realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own.

2. Opia
The ambiguous intensity of Looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable.

3. Monachopsis
The subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place.

4. Énouement
The bittersweetness of having arrived in the future, seeing how things turn out, but not being able to tell your past self.

5. Vellichor
The strange wistfulness of used bookshops.

6. Rubatosis
The unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat.

7. Kenopsia
The eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that is usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet.

8. Mauerbauertraurigkeit
The inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends who you really like.

9. Jouska
A hypothetical conversation that you compulsively play out in your head.

10. Chrysalism
The amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm.

11. Vemödalen
The frustration of photographic something amazing when thousands of identical photos already exist.

12. Anecdoche
A conversation in which everyone is talking, but nobody is listening.

13. Ellipsism
A sadness that you’ll never be able to know how history will turn out.

14. Kuebiko
A state of exhaustion inspired by acts of senseless violence.

15. Lachesism
The desire to be struck by disaster – to survive a plane crash, or to lose everything in a fire.

16. Exulansis
The tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it.

17. Adronitis
Frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone.

18. Rückkehrunruhe
The feeling of returning home after an immersive trip only to find it fading rapidly from your awareness.

19. Nodus Tollens
The realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore.

20. Onism
The frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time.

21. Liberosis
The desire to care less about things.

22. Altschmerz
Weariness with the same old issues that you’ve always had – the same boring flaws and anxieties that you’ve been gnawing on for years.

23. Occhiolism
The awareness of the smallness of your perspective.

SOURCE: https://matadornetwork.com/notebook/23-emotions-people-feel-cant-explain/
 
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I recognise 3 or 4 of those. The one that surprises me is Chrysalism as it's so oddly specific I'd always assumed that was just me.

iirc the Japanese have a feeling name for when you are alone and look at the moon.
 
I experience Jouska all the time.. playing out a hypothetical conversation in your head..but they should have a word for hte associated feeling that comes when said conversation slips out and becomes slightly audible as you're walking along the street and you have a momentary panic that someone maybe walking close behind you and think you're mad, so you start coughing or humming a tune to cover yourself.....
 
OneWingedBird said:
....The one that surprises me is Chrysalism as it's so oddly specific I'd always assumed that was just me.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've also only met a few people who've talked about the comforting feeling of listening to a storm and being inside ... I'm one of them and so is the missus.
 
I'd have thought that was the most universal one.. I've certainly heard it, or variations, referenced on tv and in conversations many times over the years.. the pleasure of being indoors by a roaring fire while there's a snow storm outside, or the joy of the rain hitting the window while your snug indoors.
 
gattino said:
I'd have thought that was the most universal one.. I've certainly heard it, or variations, referenced on tv and in conversations many times over the years.. the pleasure of being indoors by a roaring fire while there's a snow storm outside, or the joy of the rain hitting the window while your snug indoors.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ataraxia

Tranquil detachment, sort of.
 
There's the word Otaku, but that is perhaps more for someone who just knows a lot about manga and anime.
Ellipsism is an interesting word.
 
Xanatic* said:
There's the word Otaku, but that is perhaps more for someone who just knows a lot about manga and anime.
Click to expand...

Otaku is roughly equivalent to "geek" or "nerd", a Japanese person with a neurotic obsession with all the minute details of anime or manga or films or fine scale models or collectibles etc.

The first minute or so of this depicts it fairly well:

 
Every culture has some specific words that describe emotions that have no equivalent in other cultures, a German example is "gemütlich" - there is no direct translation of it, but as a German it evokes definite feelings and emotions for me. Similarly, a lot of people are aware of the term "Schadenfreude" which has no direct translation into English.
And here are some other great German words, although the translation given doesn't always give the full picture. http://hellogiggles.com/10-fabulous-german-words-english-equivalent/
 
gattino said:
I'd have thought that was the most universal one.. I've certainly heard it, or variations, referenced on tv and in conversations many times over the years.. the pleasure of being indoors by a roaring fire while there's a snow storm outside, or the joy of the rain hitting the window while your snug indoors.
Click to expand...

That's an interesting list, although I'd wholly dispute the title - I can't see why people would be unable to explain almost all of them, even if they don't have a single word for the emotion they're experiencing.

Your point about being snug and content during a storm is interesting and reminds me that one of my earliest-recalled and still most cherished moods is almost the opposite: I take pleasure in the sense of being the only individual abroad in the dark, the wind or the snow, seeing (or merely being implicitly aware of) everybody else tucked up in their homes as I pass by. It's almost invariably a mood that swells at dusk, on foot, en route home, and it absolutely demands warm lighting to emanate from the houses onto the surrounding streets or paths. It's hard to enunciate the state of mind it engenders, but it's akin to a mixture of safety and exactitude: the feeling of being in a childhood home, perhaps, coupled with that of having your whole house neat and tidy, knowing precisely where everything is and where it may be found. It grew, I'm sure, out of an enchantment with bright lights at night that has been with me since I was an infant, but the earliest experience of it that I distinctly recall was with my father one Christmas evening, trudging home through the snow in my wellingtons.

All that, I'm keenly aware, makes me sound like a megalomaniacal control-freak, but it really is that specific; it makes me feel as if God's in his heaven and all's right with the world.
 
Is there a word for the frustration of reading a potentially useful, but probably foreign, word, but knowing you'll never be confident enough about how it's pronounced to actually use it? Is that 'ch' a ch, a sh, or even a k? Is the 'e' at the end pronounced or silent? Does the accent over the 'o' make it long, or short, or do something completely different, or nothing at all?

Who here has ever definitely experienced romantic love? I'm not sure. It occurred to me that we learn very early what emotions are intended by words such as 'fear', 'hate', 'anxiety', 'joy', 'excitement'. Love is something stories and movies ram down our throats (not those kinds of movies) but it doesn't necessarily directly imply a particular emotional feeling, and perhaps we associate lots of feelings of attachment with this word that doesn't really mean anything. I've thought I was in love with the first girl I liked who showed me much attention back, with another girl with whom hindsight suggests I was just obsessed, and another woman who was, when I met her, everything I'd by that time decided I wanted in a partner. Ultimately, looking back, none of those feelings seem up to the reputation of the word 'love'. Are we being sold a myth? For example, I don't think Romeo and Juliet is about love. It's about what many teenagers think of as love. It's about blind teenage obsession.

Sorry to any romantics out there.
 
I understand what you mean. I would also say I have never experienced romantic love and I'm finding myself wondering if I just expect it to be different than what it is. Though it's also interesting how at least in the english language, "love" is used to describe so many different types of emotions. The greeks at least were a bit more specific.
 
I think the love of love songs is indeed about teenage passion, and the search for it no doubt does lead many people to great disappointment and disatisfaction with their own lot. But then again those who claim to have experienced love at first sight, being hit by a thunderbolt, or who remain eternally besotted with each other can't have their experiences denied any more than someone who sees a ghost...just because its rare or I/you haven't seen it doesn't mean its not true for them and COULD happen.

Love is often felt and identified by the negative emotions that accompany it going wrong or by parting.
 
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I never got into the Mad Men series but I watched the first episode. In that Don Draper also explains to a woman that the reason she's never experienced the "head over heels in love" thing is because it doesn't exist and was invented by advertisers to sell stockings.

Regarding the amniotic feeling, it's perhaps a variation of what Melville said. He wrote in Moby Dick that you never feel properly warm unless a part of you is cold.
 
One definition of love in teh general not specifically romantic sense which I've come to over the years is replacing concern for your own fate with concern for someone else's as your natural instinct. When a car is speeding towards you or you find a lump in an uneccessary place and you realise your first thought isn't "oh God, what will happen to me" but "Oh God what will happen to "X" if anything happens to me".
 
Loquaciousness said:
Every culture has some specific words that describe emotions that have no equivalent in other cultures, a German example is "gemütlich" - there is no direct translation of it, but as a German it evokes definite feelings and emotions for me. Similarly, a lot of people are aware of the term "Schadenfreude" which has no direct translation into English.
And here are some other great German words, although the translation given doesn't always give the full picture. http://hellogiggles.com/10-fabulous-german-words-english-equivalent/
Click to expand...
Oh, I know what Torschlusspanik feels like...
 
@Loquaciousness , I think that 'schadenfreude' has now become quite a popular loan-word within English. For a long time, I also heard 'weltanschauung' being used in the UK, as a borrowed business buzzword, but that seems to have slipped away.

I agree that the meaning of 'gemutlichkeit' is quite specialised, but, a surprisingly-large number of englischsprachenvolk who enjoy the German language do seem to have taken the trouble to understand it. In Scotland, an equivalent phrase in Lallans (lowlands contemporary Scots) is 'gey coothylyke', for a warm/comfortable/intimate location.

There is also the evocative German word 'Heimat', popularised through the famous television series of the same name. This very emotionally-loaded word, for homeland/heartland, sometimes with negative connotations, appears to resonate with the Scots word 'Hamemakkt', meaning home-spun, local, unsophisticated.

I do like the list of specialised emotions...23 and we....
 
Yithian said:
That's an interesting list, although I'd wholly dispute the title - I can't see why people would be unable to explain almost all of them, even if they don't have a single word for the emotion they're experiencing.

Your point about being snug and content during a storm is interesting and reminds me that one of my earliest-recalled and still most cherished moods is almost the opposite: I take pleasure in the sense of being the only individual abroad in the dark, the wind or the snow, seeing (or merely being implicitly aware of) everybody else tucked up in their homes as I pass by. It's almost invariably a mood that swells at dusk, on foot, en route home, and it absolutely demands warm lighting to emanate from the houses onto the surrounding streets or paths. It's hard to enunciate the state of mind it engenders, but it's akin to a mixture of safety and exactitude: the feeling of being in a childhood home, perhaps, coupled with that of having your whole house neat and tidy, knowing precisely where everything is and where it may be found. It grew, I'm sure, out of an enchantment with bright lights at night that has been with me since I was an infant, but the earliest experience of it that I distinctly recall was with my father one Christmas evening, trudging home through the snow in my wellingtons.

All that, I'm keenly aware, makes me sound like a megalomaniacal control-freak, but it really is that specific and it makes me feel as if God's in his heaven and all's right with the world.
Click to expand...

Yes! I'm much more likely to get this one than the other. Especially in Autumn, when there are high winds, with leaves blowing around, and all the lights on in the houses. First time I've heard anyone else describe it as a feeling, actually. I've long been a fan of Ray Bradbury's writing because he often describes this exact kind of scenario in his stories.

I'm definitely not a megalomaniacal control freak, though. Maybe it has something to do with liking to be alone, perhaps. Feeling more comfortable as an outsider than being safe indoors, keeping watch on things, or something like that.
 
Many (perhaps all) of the 23 terms listed above are included in
http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com ....here are a few more indefineable definitions quoted from that dictionary, to augment the list we are discussing:


avenoir
n. the desire that memory could flow backward. We take it for granted that life moves forward. But you move as a rower moves, facing backwards: you can see where you’ve been, but not where you’re going. And your boat is steered by a younger version of you. It’s hard not to wonder what life would be like facing the other way…

ambedo
n. a kind of melancholic trance in which you become completely absorbed in vivid sensory details—raindrops skittering down a window, tall trees leaning in the wind, clouds of cream swirling in your coffee—briefly soaking in the experience of being alive, an act that is done purely for its own sake.


kairosclerosis
n. 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. The term for consciously being aware that you’re happy and therefore becoming unhappy.


pâro
n. 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.

gnossienne
n. 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 of the 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.

rigor samsa
n. 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.

silience
n. 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.
 
Ulalume said:
I've long been a fan of Ray Bradbury's writing because he often describes this exact kind of scenario in his stories.
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I have two large Atkinson Grimshaw prints on my walls one depicts an home at dusk in the gloaming of autumn and the other is a nocturnal street lined with glowing gas-lit shops and homes. They're both scenes that strongly imply a viewer observing the scene and the canvases are large enough that I can imagine stepping into them in a Box of Delights fashion.
 
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Ermintrude said:
ambedo
n. a kind of melancholic trance in which you become completely absorbed in vivid sensory details—raindrops skittering down a window, tall trees leaning in the wind, clouds of cream swirling in your coffee—briefly soaking in the experience of being alive, an act that is done purely for its own sake.
Click to expand...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_experience

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peak experiences describe moments accompanied by a euphoric mental state often achieved by self-actualizing individuals.[1] The concept was originally developed by Abraham Maslow in 1964, who describes peak experiences as “rare, exciting, oceanic, deeply moving, exhilarating, elevating experiences that generate an advanced form of perceiving reality, and are even mystic and magical in their effect upon the experimenter.”[2][3] There are several unique characteristics of a peak experience, but each element is perceived together in a holistic manner that create the moment of reaching one’s full potential.[4] Peak experiences can range from simple activities to intense events[5][6] however, it's not necessarily about what the activity is, but the ecstatic, care-free feeling that is being experienced during it.[7]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Ermintrude said:
@Loquaciousness , I think that 'schadenfreude' has now become quite a popular loan-word within English. For a long time, I also heard 'weltanschauung' being used in the UK, as a borrowed business buzzword, but that seems to have slipped away.

I agree that the meaning of 'gemutlichkeit' is quite specialised, but, a surprisingly-large number of englischsprachenvolk who enjoy the German language do seem to have taken the trouble to understand it. In Scotland, an equivalent phrase in Lallans (lowlands contemporary Scots) is 'gey coothylyke', for a warm/comfortable/intimate location.

There is also the evocative German word 'Heimat', popularised through the famous television series of the same name. This very emotionally-loaded word, for homeland/heartland, sometimes with negative connotations, appears to resonate with the Scots word 'Hamemakkt', meaning home-spun, local, unsophisticated.

I do like the list of specialised emotions...23 and we....
Click to expand...

I would disagree with the Scots equivalent for Heimat, that's not really what it means to me and Germans in general ( I would argue ). It's nothing to do with home-spun or unsophisticated, it's not even homeland/heartland - it's more to do with a sense of belonging, becoming misty-eyed at the thought of it, etc. There is nothing negative about it, except for in the hands of film-makers!
 
I am currently working my way through Heimat in a version without subtitles. My German is poor to operatic.

Allusion to both the series and problems of translation made this discussion weirdly prescient; I don't think the series has been so much as mentioned on the board before.

Episode 5 tonight. I suppose this belongs in coincidences but the convoluted context would need explaining there! :)
 
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