Beautiful rare words
with the moments they found people.
Every word here was saved by someone who felt it stop them. Each one carries a definition — and a personal memory.
46 words collected
This is not a dictionary. It is a public hoard, words like sonder, hiraeth, and petrichor, each kept by someone who felt it stop them and wrote down where it found them. Read a word below, or add the moment that brought you here.
sonder
noun
The profound realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own.
hiraeth
noun
A Welsh longing for home that you cannot return to, or that never was.
nostalgia
noun
A sentimental longing for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.
petrichor
noun
The smell of rain on dry earth.
liminal
adjective
Occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a threshold or boundary.
vellichor
noun
The strange wistfulness of used bookshops.
ineffable
adjective
Too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words.
solivagant
noun
A lone wanderer; one who travels alone.
wistful
adjective
Having or showing a feeling of vague or regretful longing.
solace
noun
Comfort or consolation in a time of distress or sadness.
wanderlust
noun
A strong desire to travel and explore the world.
melancholy
noun
A pensive sadness with no obvious cause; a state of deep and pleasurable sorrow.
chrysalism
noun
The amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm.
adronitis
noun
Frustration with how long it takes to truly know someone.
opia
noun
The ambiguous intensity of eye contact — the feeling of being seen and simultaneously seeing.
hygge
noun
A Danish quality of cosiness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment.
ephemeral
adjective
Lasting for a very short time.
kenopsia
noun
The eerie, unsettling atmosphere of a place that is usually busy but is now abandoned.
wabi-sabi
noun
A Japanese worldview centred on the acceptance of transience and imperfection.
serendipity
noun
The occurrence of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.
catharsis
noun
The process of releasing and providing relief from strong or repressed emotions.
meraki
noun
Doing something with soul, creativity, and love. Leaving a piece of yourself in your work.
exulansis
noun
The tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it.
reverie
noun
A state of being pleasantly lost in one's thoughts; a daydream.
respite
noun
A short period of rest or relief from something difficult or unpleasant.
lucent
adjective
Glowing with or giving off light; luminously clear.
numinous
adjective
Having a strong spiritual or mysterious quality; suggesting the presence of something greater.
susurrus
noun
A whispering or murmuring sound.
selcouth
adjective
Strange and wonderful; unfamiliar, rare, and marvellous.
halcyon
adjective
Denoting a period of time in the past that was idyllically happy and peaceful.
ennui
noun
A feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement.
phosphorescence
noun
Light emitted by a substance without combustion or perceptible heat; a soft, mysterious glow.
anemoia
noun
Nostalgia for a time you have never known.
liberosis
noun
The desire to care less about things.
Crotchety
adjective
Cranky, disagreeable, or stubborn, especially if prone to odd whims or fancies.
Deliquesce
verb
To melt and disappear.
Ouroboros
noun
A serpent, dragon or worm that eats its own tail, a representation of the continuous cycle of life and death.
Aggrade
verb
* To build up or raise the level of a riverbed or landscape through the deposition of sediment, as if the earth itself were composing itself into higher ground; to gradually elevate a surface through accumulation.
Adage
noun
An old saying which has obtained credit by long use
Genuflect
verb
*verb.* To bend one's knee in an act of reverence, submission, or prayer, whether before an altar, a sovereign, or the weight of one's own conscience. The body's eloquent confession of humility.
derelict
noun
A person without a home, job, or property
sycophants
noun
One who uses obsequious compliments to gain self-serving favor or advantage from another; a servile flatterer.
Pyrrhic
adjective
Describing a victory so costly in its achievement that it amounts to a defeat, named for the ancient king Pyrrhus whose triumphs against Rome left his armies so devastated they could not continue the war. To win pyrrhically is to discover that the price of conquest has consumed the very spoils one sought to claim.
flippant
adjective
Marked by a casual, irreverent disregard for the weight or seriousness of a matter; speaking or acting with a lightness that dismisses gravity where gravity is due. The flippant remark dances where solemnity should stand.
Jökull
*noun.* An Icelandic glacier, those vast rivers of ancient ice that move with glacial patience through mountain valleys, carving the land into cathedrals of stone and crevasse.
Apogee
noun
The point, in an orbit about the Earth, that is furthest from the Earth: the apoapsis of an Earth orbiter.