Fun Fact of the Week: Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a book published in 2021 by John Koenig, which seeks to give names to countless feelings (not necessarily all sad) that we all experience as humans, but don’t often have the words to describe. It’s a wonderful book and you should really read it if you get the chance. Quite often the words are made up by the author to fill a void they noticed existed in our lexicon, but all words and meanings are fictions, aren’t they? So, in this here’s a few words to illuminate your emotional soup. 

Moledro: n. A feeling of resonant connection with an author or artist you’ll never meet, who may have lived centuries ago or thousands of miles away, but can still get inside your head communicating the exact same experiences you have had. 

Manusia: the ambient feeling of being a human being; a baseline mood that everyone feels but can never pin down because they have nothing to compare it to. 

Anoscetia: n. The anxiety of not knowing the real you. 

Addleworth: adj. Unable to settle the question of whether you’re doing ok in life. 

Bareleveling: v. intr. Trying to improve yourself without anyone else knowing about it, lest they think it’s silly, granious, unnecessary, or vain. 

Aesthosis: n. The state of feeling trapped in your own subjective tastes– wishing you could remove the sociopolitical lenses from your eyes so you could see the beauty in everything. 

1202: n. The tipping point when your brain becomes so overwhelmed with tasks that you need to do that you feel too guilty to put off anything until later. Being immobilized after prioritizing everything at the top of your list, and being unable to decide which to do first. (The 1202 alarm on the Apollo 11 mission signified that the computer was receiving more data than it could process).

The meantime: n. The moment of realization that your quintessential future self isn’t ever going to show up, which forces the role to fall upon you as your unidealized, not yet fully formed self. 

Flashover: n. The moment a conversation sparks– when it becomes real and alive and you connect on a level without much, if any, societal norms dictating your interactions. 

Mottleheaded: adj. Feeling uneasy when socializing with unusual combinations of friends, family, and colleagues, which risks either watering down your identity, or accidentally triggering some sort of explosion. 

Falesia: n. The disquieting awareness that someone’s importance to you and your importance to them may not necessarily match. 

Watashiato: n. Curiosity about the impact you’ve had on the lives of the people you know, wondering which of the harmless actions or long-forgotten words might have altered the plot of their stories in ways you’ll never get to see. 

Hickering: n. The habit of falling hard for whatever pretty new acquaintance happens to come along, spending hours wallowing in the handful of details you can gather about them, connecting the dots into elaborate constellations, even imagining an entire future together, with no particular purpose other than that it’s fun to think about. 

Aimonomia: n. The fear that learning the name of something– a bird, a constellation, an attractive stranger– will somehow ruin it, inadvertently transforming a lucky discovery into a conceptual husk pinned in a glass case, leaving one less mystery fluttering around in the universe.

Zverism: n. The wish that people could suspend their civility and indulge the physical side of each other first– sniffing each other’s hair like dogs, staring unabashedly at each other's faces, reveling in a beautiful voice like a song on the radio. 

Bye-over: n. The sheepish casual vibe between two people who’ve shared an emotional farewell but then unexpectedly have a little extra time together. 

Lilo: n. A friendship which can lie dormant for years only to pick right back up instantly. 

Los vidados: n. The half-remembered acquaintances you knew years ago who you might have forgotten completely if someone hadn’t happened to mention them again. 

The kinder surprise: n. The point in your early adolescence when you realize that your parents are muddling through their lives the same as you are; that many respectable adults are no less lost than you and your friends. 

Confunding: n. The (often confounded) expectation that if you keep searching up the chain of command you will eventually find someone who seems to know what is going on and has it all under control. Finding out that your superiors, from a teacher, to a judge, to the Secretary General of the UN are just as human, troubled, and confused as you are. 

Ludiosis: n. The sense that you’re just making it up as you go along– knowing that if someone asked why you do most things, you couldn’t really come up with a convincing explanation. 

Gnossienne: n. The awareness that someone you’ve known for years still has a private and mysterious inner life. 

Dordogne: adj. Wondering if you could slip away from an event of group conversation without anyone noticing your absence. 

Hanker sore: adj. Finding a person so attractive it actually pisses you off. 

Sonder: n. The awareness that every single person you pass on the street has a life, troubles, and joys, just as deep and complex as your own. 

Xeno: n. The smallest measurable unit of human connection which are fleeting and random but still contain powerful emotional nutrients that alleviate the feeling of being alone. A warm smile, a sympathetic nod, a shared laugh about some small coincidence.