Some feelings and situations take a whole sentence to explain until you know the word. Here are thirteen, each with its meaning and an example.
A word has a deep meaning, in the sense this list uses, when it does the work of a sentence. It names a feeling, a moment or a situation that you would otherwise have to explain.
Each of the thirteen below has an entry in Cambridge or Merriam-Webster, and the link in its section goes to that entry. Origins, dates and second senses below come from the linked entries, with the source named. The words are grouped by what they name: feelings, things you notice, situations and ways of being.
Three words that fit the same description, limerence, schadenfreude and alexithymia, are already in feeling words, so they are left out.
01 · Feelings
frisson
free-SOHNA quick shiver of excitement, fear, or both at once.
The first notes of that song still give me a frisson.
Merriam-Webster gives the origin as “French, shiver” and dates the first known use in English to 1777. The French source is a physical reaction, not a mood.
That is what makes it useful. If something got to you and you are not sure how, frisson commits to the shiver and leaves the rest open.
02 · Feelings
verklempt
ver-KLEMPTSo full of feeling that the words stop coming.
He got verklempt halfway through his speech at his brother's wedding.
Merriam-Webster says English borrowed verklempt from Yiddish farklemt, and dates its first known use to 1991. Its own definition is “overcome with emotion : choked up”.
The definition does not say which emotion, so it fits a proud moment as well as a sad one. It reports what the feeling did to the person, not what the feeling was.
03 · Feelings
ennui
ahn-WEEA weary boredom caused by having nothing interesting or exciting to do.
Nothing was wrong, and the whole afternoon was pure ennui.
Ennui is French. Merriam-Webster traces it to “French, from Old French enui annoyance” and dates its first known use in English to 1732. The source meaning is small, and the feeling the word names today is larger.
Cambridge labels ennui literary, a label to keep in mind if you are about to use it in conversation.
04 · Feelings
inured
ih-NOORDNo longer upset by something bad, after living with it a long time.
After three years here, I'm inured to the sirens outside my window.
Cambridge lists the entry as “inure someone to something”, which matches how inured is usually used: you are inured to something. It labels the entry formal. Merriam-Webster defines inure as “to accustom to accept something undesirable”.
The thing stays undesirable. Inured says you cope with it, and it does not say the thing got any better.
05 · Things you notice
petrichor
PET-rih-korThe earthy smell of rain falling on dry ground.
Ten minutes of rain and the whole street smelled of petrichor.
Merriam-Webster gives the origin as “petr(o)- + ichor” and dates the first known use to 1964. Cambridge labels it specialized.
It is the one word here that names a smell, which also makes it the easiest to test. The next time it rains after a dry week, you can decide for yourself whether the word fits.
06 · Things you notice
pareidolia
per-EYE-DOH-lee-uhSeeing something familiar, like a face, in a random pattern.
Thanks to pareidolia, the power outlet in the hallway looks surprised.
Merriam-Webster says the word was “borrowed from German Pareidolie, from Greek”, and its entry goes on to give the Greek eídōlon, “image, reflection”. Cambridge labels it specialized, and its own example is “a face in a cloud”.
The word puts the work on the viewer. Nothing in the cloud is a face; the viewer supplies it.
07 · Things you notice
mondegreen
MON-dih-greenA misheard word or phrase that gets a new meaning.
I sang the mondegreen for ten years before anyone told me the real words.
The word comes from a mishearing. Merriam-Webster says it is “from the mishearing in a Scottish ballad of ‘laid him on the green’ as ‘Lady Mondegreen’”, and dates its first known use to 1954.
A mondegreen happens in the listener, not the speaker. The words were said correctly, and someone else’s ears gave them a new meaning.
08 · Things you notice
tsundoku
tsoon-DOH-kooBuying books faster than reading them, or the pile of unread books.
I bought two more books today, and the tsundoku is winning.
Tsundoku is about a gap, not a number. A big library is not a tsundoku just because it is big; the word is about the distance between what you buy and what you get to.
Cambridge’s entry adds that the word is “also used to refer to the pile itself”, so it can name the habit or the stack by the bed.
A rare word earns its place by saving a sentence. It does not get one for being rare.
09 · Situations
zugzwang
TSOOK-tsvahngHaving to move when every possible move makes things worse.
We have to pick a budget option and every one is bad, so we are in zugzwang.
Zugzwang began as a chess word. Merriam-Webster defines it as “the necessity of moving in chess when it is to one’s disadvantage” and traces it to German, “from zug pull, tug + zwang force, coercion”. The figurative sense, the one used away from the board, is what Wiktionary gives as “A situation in which someone is forced to make a disadvantageous move.”
The word to notice in the chess definition is “necessity”. A player has to move, so a position where any move hurts cannot be waited out. Zugzwang is not just a bad choice; it is a bad choice you are not allowed to refuse. Outside chess, use it for a budget or another forced choice only when the listener knows the word.
10 · Situations
sisyphean
sis-ih-FEE-uhnImpossible to finish, because the work has to be done again and again.
Clearing the inbox felt sisyphean; it was full again by lunch.
Sisyphean is named for Sisyphus, whom Wiktionary describes as “doomed eternally to roll a boulder up a hill in Tartarus, a part of Hades”. Merriam-Webster defines the adjective as “of, relating to, or suggestive of the labors of Sisyphus” and dates its first known use to 1635. Cambridge labels it formal.
The word carries the myth’s “eternally”. A very large job is not Sisyphean as long as it ends.
11 · Situations
shibboleth
SHIB-uh-lethA small habit or word that marks who belongs and who does not.
Calling the office by its old name is a shibboleth here.
Merriam-Webster traces shibboleth to Hebrew shibbōleth, “stream”, and to “the use of this word in Judges 12:6 as a test to distinguish Gileadites from Ephraimites”. The word was a test before it was anything else.
Cambridge lists another sense first and labels it formal: a belief or custom that is no longer thought to be as important or correct as it once was. That sense has nothing to do with who belongs, so context decides which one is meant.
12 · Ways of being
sprezzatura
spret-suh-TOO-ruhA relaxed, easy style that hides how much work went into it.
His whole apartment has a sprezzatura that took a decorator six weeks.
Wiktionary says English borrowed sprezzatura from Italian, where it means “nonchalance”, and that the Italian word was coined by Baldassare Castiglione in 1528.
It is a practiced ease, not a natural one: Merriam-Webster’s definition starts “studied nonchalance”.
13 · Ways of being
sangfroid
sahn-FRWAHStaying calm in danger or a crisis, when most people would panic.
She handled the kitchen fire with the sangfroid the rest of us lacked.
Merriam-Webster gives the origin as “French sang-froid, literally, cold blood” and dates the first known use to 1750. Cambridge labels it formal.
The word judges what can be seen: how someone acts under pressure.
Four of the senses used above are labeled in Cambridge as literary or formal: ennui is literary, and inured to, Sisyphean and sangfroid are formal. That is worth knowing before you use them.
A rare word works when the listener will follow it and it saves you a sentence. When they may not, the plain sentence is the kinder one: “he stayed calm through the whole delay” says what “sangfroid” says, with no one left behind.