The Lexicon Obscura

That specific feeling you get walking into a secondhand bookshop — surrounded by thousands of books written by strangers, read by other strangers, full of lives and worlds you will never enter. Melancholy and magical in equal measure.

Example

“She felt a sudden vellichor as she browsed the dusty shelves, each book a universe she’d never enter.”

Origin

Coined by John Koenig in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows — a project dedicated to inventing names for emotions that don’t have them yet. Not in any official dictionary. Arguably more useful than half the words that are.

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Usability: Extremely low. Emotional accuracy: Perfect.

The earthy, distinctive scent that rises from dry ground when rain first hits it. Produced by a combination of geosmin (a compound released by soil bacteria) and plant oils that have been absorbed into rock and soil. You have smelled this thousands of times. You have probably never had a word for it.

Example

“The petrichor after the first summer rain brought back memories of childhood afternoons in the garden.”

Origin

From the Greek petra (stone) and ichor (the fluid said to flow through the veins of the gods). Named by two Australian scientists in 1964. One of the rare cases where a scientific term is also genuinely poetic.

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Actually the most “usable” word on this list. Still, nobody uses it.

A Welsh concept borrowed into English because English simply didn’t have anything good enough. It goes beyond homesickness — it’s a longing for something lost, something unreachable, or something that perhaps only ever existed as an ideal. Grief and desire and nostalgia folded into one feeling with no clean edges.

Example

“There’s a hiraeth in her heart for the simpler times of her grandmother’s village — though she never actually lived there.”

Origin

Imported from Welsh, where it has been in use for centuries. One of a class of words — along with the Portuguese saudade and the Japanese mono no aware — that suggest other languages have been paying closer attention to certain feelings than English has.

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Pronounced incorrectly by approximately 100% of non-Welsh speakers on the first attempt.

The realization — which tends to arrive unexpectedly, usually while watching people in a public place — that every person walking past has their own interior world. Their own anxieties and grocery lists and unresolved conversations. You are a background character in their story. They are a background character in yours. The universe is much larger and much more crowded than it usually feels.

Example

“Sitting in the café, he was hit by a wave of sonder, realizing that every person outside had their own triumphs and tragedies.”

Origin

Also from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Influenced by the German sonder (special) and wandern (to wander). Not in any standard dictionary, which seems like an oversight.

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Technically not a real word. Feels more real than most real words.

A person who stubbornly adheres to a mistaken custom, belief, or expression even after the error has been pointed out and explained. Can also refer to the erroneous practice itself. The specific variety of stubbornness where the wrongness has been clearly demonstrated and yet nothing changes. You have encountered this person in every workplace you have ever worked in.

Example

“He’s a real mumpsimus — we’ve shown him the data three times but he insists his original method is correct.”

Origin

From a medieval priest who consistently mispronounced a Latin phrase in the Mass — and when corrected, replied that he had no intention of changing his mumpsimus for anyone’s sumpsimus. Erasmus documented the story. The word has been waiting to be useful ever since.

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The most immediately applicable word on this list. Please use it responsibly.