The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a website and a YouTube channel that was created by John Koenig. It basically makes up new words for powerful emotions that do not yet have a descriptive term. Although the neologisms are entirely made up by Koenig, they are based on etymological history and meanings of standard prefixes and suffixes. Not many people know about the existence of this “dictionary” although it has been growing in popularity recently after being shared on multiple social media sites. Nevertheless, reading the description of an emotion that you can completely relate to and having a word to link that emotion to brings about a wonderful feeling. It somehow makes that emotion all the more real and makes you feel understood by knowing that, somewhere out there, people have felt the way you have. Here is a list of some of my favorite words from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows:
1. Mal De Coucou
“A phenomenon in which you have an active social life but very few close friends – people who you can trust, who you can be yourself with, who can help flush out the weird psychological toxins that tend to accumulate over time – which is a form of acute social malnutrition in which even if you devour an entire buffet of chitchat, you’ll still feel pangs of hunger.”
2. Lutalica
“The part of your identity that doesn’t fit into categories.”
3. Exulansis
“The tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it – whether through envy or pity or simple foreignness – which allows it to drift away from the rest of your life story, until the memory itself feels out of place, almost mythical, wandering restlessly in the fog, no longer even looking for a place to land.”
4. Occhiolism
“The awareness of the smallness of your perspective, by which you couldn’t possibly draw any meaningful conclusions at all, about the world or the past or the complexities of culture, because although your life is an epic and unrepeatable anecdote, it still only has a sample size of one, and may end up being the control for a much wilder experiment happening in the next room.”
5. Vellichor
“The strange wistfulness of used bookstores, which are somehow infused with the passage of time – filled with thousands of old books you’ll never have time to read, each of which is itself locked in its own era, bound and dated and papered over like an old room the author abandoned years ago, a hidden annex littered with thoughts left just as they were on the day they were captured.”
6. Sonder
“The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway.”
7. Nighthawk
“A recurring thought that only seems to strike you late at night – an overdue task, a nagging guilt, a looming and shapeless future – that circles high overhead during the day, that pecks at the back of your mind while you try to sleep.”
8. Adronitis
“The frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone – spending the first few weeks chatting in their psychological entryway, with each subsequent conversation like entering a different anteroom, each a little closer to the center of the house – wishing instead that you could start there and work your way out, exchanging your deepest secrets first, before easing into casualness, until you’ve build up enough mystery over the years to ask them where they’re from and what they do for a living.”
9. Catoptric Tristesse
“The sadness that you’ll never really know what other people think of you, whether good, bad or if at all – that although we reflect on each other with the sharpness of a mirror, the true picture of how we’re coming off somehow reaches us softened and distorted, as if each mirror was preoccupied with twisting around, desperately trying to look itself in the eye.”
10. Mimeomia
“The frustration of knowing how easily you fit into a stereotype, even if you never intended to, even if it’s unfair, even if everyone else feels the same way – each of us trick-or-treating for money and respect and attention, wearing a safe and predictable costume because we’re tired of answering the question, “What are you supposed to be?”
Head on over to the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows to find more neologisms and pick your favorite ones. The YouTube channel also has really great videos that explain the meanings of the words through amazing visuals and an inspirational monologue as a voiceover.
