Oh dear. This one is a bit heavy, but then a collection of obscure sorrows would be. There is something sweet and melancholic in it all as well, and somehow this little gallery of sadness is inspiring to me.
Here are some of my favourites:
Zenosyne: the sense that time keeps moving faster.
Lachesism: 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.
Altschmerz: weariness with the same old issues that you’ve always had—the same boring flaws and anxieties you’ve been gnawing on for years, which leaves them soggy and tasteless and inert, with nothing interesting left to think about, nothing left to do but spit them out and wander off to the backyard, ready to dig up some fresher pain you might have buried long ago.
It's also worth mentioning that this dictionary is invented. John Koenig decided that there were holes in the English language - we were missing words for these deep feelings we all experience. So he invented them.
Check them all out here.
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