The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a compendium of invented words written by John Koenig. Each original definition aims to fill a hole in the language—to give a name to emotions we all might experience but don’t yet have a word for.

Email the author at obscuresorrows@gmail.com

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If you send me an email, I will write you back. It may take me a week, or a year, or five years, but I value tremendously what random strangers have to say, and tell me about what is going on in their heads. Nothing is more rare or valuable. After all, it's a peek into the heart of the protagonist. That, to me, is the meaning of sonder.

John Koenig is a graphic designer, editor, and voice performer from Minnesota, who currently lives in Amsterdam with his wife. His work has been acclaimed by New York Magazine, Washington Post Express, Business Insider, Jason Kottke, and the guys from Radiolab.

All content Copyright John Koenig 2009-2015. All content is intended to be read at night.

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Sometimes it feels like your life is flashing before your eyes, but it’s actually the opposite: you’re thinking forward, to all the things you haven’t done, the places you intend to visit, the goals you’ll get around to…

For a million years we’ve watched the sky
and huddled in fear.
But somehow you still find yourself
quietly rooting for the storm.
As if a part of you is tired of waiting,
wondering when the world will fall apart
—by lot, by fate, by the will of the gods—
almost daring them to grant your wish.

But really you can wish all you want,
because life is a game of chance.
And each passing day
is another flip of the coin.
Who could blame us for wanting to be there when it lands?

“When you were born they put you in a little box and slapped a label on it. But if we begin to notice these categories no longer fit us, maybe it’ll mean that we’ve finally arrived—just unpacking the boxes, making ourselves at home.”

From The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Chapter 2 begins now.

“Maybe we should think of memory itself as a work of art—and a work of art is never finished, only abandoned.”

“Life is short. And life is long. But not in that order.”

Zenosyne: The Sense That Time Keeps Going Faster

lachesism

n. the desire to be struck by disaster—to survive a plane crash, to lose everything in a fire, to plunge over a waterfall—which would put a kink in the smooth arc of your life, and forge it into something hardened and flexible and sharp, not just a stiff prefabricated beam that barely covers the gap between one end of your life and the other.

exulansis

n. the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it—whether through envy or pity or simple foreignness—which allows it to drift away from the rest of your life story, until the memory itself feels out of place, almost mythical, wandering restlessly in the fog, no longer even looking for a place to land.