# Feltwords

> A dictionary of words for feelings that don't have one. 22 published entries. Each word is labelled loanword, coined by John Koenig, coined here, viral fabrication, or dialect.

## Words

- [anemoia](https://feltwords.pages.dev/word/anemoia/) (en, coined by John Koenig): Homesickness for a decade you were born too late to see, set off by a box of a stranger's 1960s slides or a song from before your parents met.
- [exulansis](https://feltwords.pages.dev/word/exulansis/) (en, coined by John Koenig): Back from five months at a research station in Antarctica, you answer the third person who asks how it was with "cold" and start talking about their kitchen.
- [Fernweh](https://feltwords.pages.dev/word/fernweh/) (de, loanword): Standing at an airport departures board, reading out Windhoek and Montevideo, and aching to go somewhere you have never been.
- [Fremdschämen](https://feltwords.pages.dev/word/fremdschamen/) (de, loanword): The urge to cover your face when someone else embarrasses themselves and does not seem to notice.
- [Freudenfreude](https://feltwords.pages.dev/word/freudenfreude/) (de, viral fabrication): Your friend texts that she passed the exam you failed last month, and after one sour second you are honestly glad for her.
- [Glückschmerz](https://feltwords.pages.dev/word/gluckschmerz/) (de, viral fabrication): The sting when the coworker who coasted all year is called up at the holiday party to collect the bonus you wanted.
- [hiraeth](https://feltwords.pages.dev/word/hiraeth/) (cy, loanword): A Welsh nurse in a London flat hears a male voice choir through the wall and grieves for a valley, and people, she cannot get back.
- [kenopsia](https://feltwords.pages.dev/word/kenopsia/) (en, coined by John Koenig): The wrong-footed quiet of a stadium concourse the morning after a game, or any room built for a crowd and standing empty.
- [liberosis](https://feltwords.pages.dev/word/liberosis/) (en, coined by John Koenig): Checking work email late on a Sunday night while the dog sleeps on the rug, and wanting to mind about the inbox as little as the dog does.
- [monachopsis](https://feltwords.pages.dev/word/monachopsis/) (en, coined by John Koenig): The new hire, months in, who still does not know whose mug is whose: the slow, ongoing mismatch of a person and a place that never quite fits.
- [natsukashii](https://feltwords.pages.dev/word/natsukashii/) (ja, loanword): Walking past your old primary school as the same lunch chime plays, and saying the word out loud before you have decided to.
- [onism](https://feltwords.pages.dev/word/onism/) (en, coined by John Koenig): Dropping the little Street View figure onto a random road in Kazakhstan and knowing that this, a fence and a gas station, is as close as you will get.
- [pena ajena](https://feltwords.pages.dev/word/pena-ajena/) (es, loanword): A cousin in Guadalajara grabs the karaoke microphone at a quinceañera, misses every note of a ranchera, and the whole table stares at its plates.
- [saudade](https://feltwords.pages.dev/word/saudade/) (pt, loanword): Hearing a fado on a Lisbon tram and missing a grandmother's kitchen that is gone, while half-enjoying the missing.
- [Schadenfreude](https://feltwords.pages.dev/word/schadenfreude/) (de, loanword): The small lift when the car that sped past you on the shoulder turns up a mile later, pulled over, with a police car behind it.
- [Sehnsucht](https://feltwords.pages.dev/word/sehnsucht/) (de, loanword): Hearing a song from when you were sixteen in a supermarket aisle and wanting, badly, something you cannot name or get back.
- [sonder](https://feltwords.pages.dev/word/sonder/) (en, coined by John Koenig): The jolt of seeing a stranger at a bus stop as the center of a whole life, with its own errands and debts, that you will never hear about.
- [toska](https://feltwords.pages.dev/word/toska/) (ru, loanword): A cab driver whose son has died tells the story to passengers who do not listen, then to his horse.
- [vellichor](https://feltwords.pages.dev/word/vellichor/) (en, coined by John Koenig): The quiet pull of a used bookstore, where a pencilled price, a stranger's inscription and a forgotten bus ticket each point to an earlier owner.
- [vergüenza ajena](https://feltwords.pages.dev/word/verguenza-ajena/) (es, loanword): Watching a wedding photographer shout poses at guests who are trying to eat, and wanting to hide under the table on his behalf.
- [Waldeinsamkeit](https://feltwords.pages.dev/word/waldeinsamkeit/) (de, loanword): Two hours past the last marked trail in a beech wood, the road noise gone and nobody since the car park, and glad of it.
- [Wanderlust](https://feltwords.pages.dev/word/wanderlust/) (de, loanword): Refreshing a page of cheap flights at midnight with a full week of work ahead, wanting to be on any road but this one.

## Lists

- [8 German words for feelings, 2 of which are not German](https://feltwords.pages.dev/lists/german-words-for-feelings/): Six German feeling words from Schadenfreude to Waldeinsamkeit, plus Freudenfreude and Glückschmerz, two English inventions that only look German.

## About

- [About](https://feltwords.pages.dev/about/): labels, pronunciation, and sources
- [John Koenig's words](https://feltwords.pages.dev/koenig/)