Beautiful rare words
with the moments they found people.

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.

Apogee

noun

The point, in an orbit about the Earth, that is furthest from the Earth: the apoapsis of an Earth orbiter.

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.

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.

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.