The sad awareness that the unfolding plot of your life feels new and profound but is not unique, just one of a few dozen possible riffs on the same chord progression, while the tunes reverberating from the jukebox in your chest are all covers of old standards from the Great Emotional Songbook.

Coined by John Koenig in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, a project, to create a compendium of invented words for every emotion we might all experience but don’t yet have a word for.


PHOTO CREDIT : ANTONIS SPIRIDAKIS
Bookmark (0)

 

Affiliate Disclosure: Some of the links or advertisements in the wordket website are affiliate links or advertisements, meaning, at no additional cost to you. We will earn a commission, if you click through and make a purchase. Thank you 🙂

Leave a Reply

You May Also Like
Read More

Degrassé

Entranced and unsettled by the vastness of the universe, experienced in a jolt of recognition that the night…
Read More

Chrysalism

The amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm, listening to waves of rain pattering against the roof…
Read More

Anecdoche

A conversation in which everyone is talking but nobody is listening, simply overlaying disconnected words like a game of…
Read More

Meliorism

The belief that the world gets better, the belief that humans can improve the world. In other words,…
Read More

Trumspringa

The temptation to step off your career track and become a shepherd in the mountains, following your flock…
Read More

Watashiato

The curiosity about the impact you’ve had on the lives of the people you know, wondering which of…
Read More

Dead Reckoning

To find yourself bothered by someone’s death more than you would have expected. As if you assumed they…
Read More

Backmasking

The instinctive tendency to see someone as you knew them in their youth, a burned-in image of grass-stained…
Read More

Xeno

The smallest measurable unit of human connection, typically exchanged between passing strangers. It can be a flirtatious glance,…
Read More

Ringlorn

The wish that the modern world felt as epic as the one depicted in old stories and folktales—a…
Read More

Athazagoraphobia

Phobia means, an extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something. Athazagoraphobia is the fear of being…