This is a list of words I find wonderful (deeply pretentious, according to ZP smh).
| word | definition |
|---|---|
| Gloaming | twilight |
| Quintessence | the fifth ancient element; aether |
| Chrysalis | the hard case enclosing a quiescent moth |
| Sepulchral | gloomy, tomblike |
| Languorous | aish; a pleasurable inactivity |
| Nychthemeron | period of 24 hours |
| Ersatz | not genuine |
| Ensorcell | enchant |
| Glockenspiel | a metal xylophone |
| Apeirogon | a shape with a countably infinite number of sides |
| Chthonic | relating to the underworld |
| Sangfroid | composure |
| Hyperborean | inhabitant of the far north |
| Pareidolia | seeing meaning where there is none |
| Belamour | beloved |
| Oeillade | glance |
| Hedylogos | the god of flattery |
| Eunoia | goodwill between the speaker and the audience, lit. “beautiful mind”, the shortest word with all five vowel graphemes |
| Mesperyian | tumblr goddess |
| Kerfuffle | commotion |
| Coquelicot | poppy red |
| Eburnean | ivory |
| Sirocco | mediterranean wind |
| Chryselephantine | gold and ivory |
| Lagniappe | small gift |
| Averno | poetry book, entrance to the underworld in Aeneid |
| Chiaroscuro | interplay of light and dark in paintings |
| Columbarium | building with funerary urns |
| Orchestral | |
| Iconoclastic | counterculture, attacking cherished beliefs or institutions |
| Eclipse | |
| Chameleonate | not a real word; changeable |
| Limerence | infatuation or obsession with another |
| Phlegethon | river of fire |
| Styx | river of the dead |
| Hapax Legomenon | only example of a word |
| Insouciant | unconcerned |
| Schwarzsapple | not a real word; a lovely collection of sounds, courtesy of Savannah Brown(?) |
| Selador | Tolkien’s favourite sound, homophone of cellar door |
| Eudaimonia | highest human good |
| Mondegreen | a misunderstood phrase from mishearing a song |
| Saudade | Portuguese, a yearning for a beloved which one may never meet again |
| Oneiric | relating to dreams |
| Sidereal | relating to distant stars |
| Echt | authentic and typical |
| Ouphe | goblin changeling |
| Darkling | growing dark, characterised by darkness |
| Bibulously | drunkenly |
| Cephalophore | a Christian saint depicted as carrying their own severed head |
| Crepuscular | reminiscent of the twilight hours |
| Endling | the last member of a species before extinction |
| Halcyon | summer days, but also a bird of classical mythology said to calm the seas in order to nest its eggs; also a genus of kingfishers |
| Hesternal | pertaining to yesterday |
| Latrinalia | scrawlings over public toilets |
| Peregrine | wandering or migratory; foreign |
| Psychopomp | one who guides the souls of the dead |
| Skolion | a song sung in honour of Gods and heroes by guests at an ancient Greek banquet; the lyre was passed around from person to person and lyrics were improvised |
| þhing | a public assembly, or judicial council |
| Imbroglio | an extremely confused or embarrassing situation |
| Inglenook | a space on either side of a large fireplace |
| Plenum | opposite of a vacuum |
| Stychomythia | frenzied back and forth between two people, a frenzy of wit |
| Hypnagogic | the state right before you fall asleep |
| Hypnopompic | the state right before you awake |
| Soricine | of or resembling shrews |
| Flimmering | glimmering |
| Flygolding | ladybird |
| An/aesthetic | from the biographies at the end of Sandman: Worlds’ End |
| Automegalogolex | the act of looking up the definition of automegalogolex |
| Morticide | killing death |
| Pataphysics | the science of imaginary solutions |
| Chrononhotonthologos | a satirical play from 1734 |
| Mamihlapinatapai | a look between two people who want to start something, but neither wants to be the first, an expressive and meaningful silence. Yaghan, from Tierra del Fuego |
| crépuscule (FR) | dusk |
| ensorceler (FR) | bewitch |
| luciole (FR) | firefly |
| myrtille (FR) | berry |
| saperlipopette (FR) | oh my stars! |
| éblouissante (FR) | dazzling |
| chuchoter (FR) | whisper |
| libellule (FR) | dragonfly |
| flâneur (FR) | one who watches society life (feminine: flâneuse) |
| desalniettemin (NL) | nevertheless… |
Importantly, these are made up! And although the definitions purple (and I’d like to exculpate myself but I did, after all, leave them alone) they’re a lovely read.
| word | definition |
|---|---|
| Midding | the feeling of being on the edge of a campfire, or sleeping in the back seat while friends chat in the front - feeling safe and included, and allowed to be |
| Sonder | the realisation that every person’s life is as vivid and complex as yours |
| Petrichor | the smell of the ground after it rains |
| Onism | the frustration of being stuck in one body, and realising you’ll never do all of the things you want to |
| Exulansis | giving up talking about an experience because people will never be able to understand just how deeply it struck you, until the memory feels unreal, mythical, wandering in the fog, unable to land |
| Ambedo | a trance in which you are completely absorbed by one thing, the swirl of a cloud, the fall of a raindrop on a leaf, soaking in the experience of being alive, something done for its own sake |
| Opia | the intensity of staring into someone’s eyes, like staring through a window and yet being unable to see what’s inside, totally ambiguous, and yet soul-touching |
| Vemödalen | the frustration of photographing something incredible, while knowing that literally thousands of the same image exist, of sunsets, flowers, the curve of a nose, the twinkle of an eye, turning something profoundly beautiful into something that feels fake and gimmicky |
| Vellichor | the wistfulness of a used bookshop, the feeling of being in the same room as thoughts of hundreds of years, scratchy writing, the emotions and ideas of writers who could never have imagined you, of readers just like you and yet completely different whose hands stroked the same pages |
| Rückkehrunruhe | the feeling of returning home from an amazing, vivid, extraordinary journey, only to find the comparative paltriness of everyday life rapidly washing it from your memory, until you have to remind yourself that it happened |
| Chrysalism | the tranquility of being indoors in a thunderstorm, hearing the great patter and crashing thunder, and being perfectly safe and cocooned |
| Mahpiohanzia | the disappointment of being unable to stretch out your wings and fly |
| Trumspringa | the desire to slip off of the beaten track of your life and live on the coast, in a lonely lighthouse, wandering in the cathedral of green and grey and the outside |
| Zenosyne | the sense that time keeps going faster |
| Énouement | the bittersweetness of having arrived here in the future, finally learning the answers to how things turned out but being unable to tell your past self |
| Querinous | longing for a sense of certainty in a relationship; wishing there were some way to know ahead of time whether this is the person you’re going to wake up next to for twenty thousand mornings in a row, instead of having to count them out one by one, quietly hoping your streak continues |