The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

by John Koenig

thrapt adj. awed at the impact someone has had on your life, feeling intimidated by how profoundly they helped shape your identity, having served as a ghostwriter of a work that nevertheless only appears under your name.

heartworm n. a relationship or friendship that you can’t get out of your head, which you thought had faded long ago but is still somehow alive and unfinished, like an abandoned campsite whose smoldering embers still have the power to start a forest fire.

monachopsis n. the subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place, as maladapted to your surroundings as a seal on a beach, lumbering and clumsy, huddled in the company of other misfits, dreaming of life in your natural habitat, a place where you’d be fluidly, brilliantly, effortlessly at home. Ancient Greek μοναχός (monakhós), single, solitary + ὄψις (ópsis), vision. Pronounced “mon-uh-kop-sis.”

eisce n. the awareness of the infinitesimal role you play in shaping your own society—knowing that whenever you smile at a stranger, pronounce a word a certain way, laugh at a certain joke, or choose the slightly shinier apple, you are unwittingly helping to construct the world in which you live—a role both vanishingly small but also somehow daunting, making it that much harder to complain about the traffic, knowing that you are traffic. Irish eisceacht, exception. Pronounced “ahy-shuh.”

kuebiko n. a state of exhaustion inspired by senseless tragedies and acts of violence, which force you to abruptly revise your expectations of what can happen in this world, trying to prop yourself up like an old scarecrow, who’s bursting at the seams yet powerless to do anything but stand there and watch. In Japanese mythology, Kuebiko is the name of a kami deity, a scarecrow who stands all day watching the world go by, which has made him very wise but locked in place. Pronounced “koo-web-i-koh.”

catoptric tristesse n. the sadness that you’ll never really know what other people think of you, whether good, bad, or if at all—that although you can gather a few hints here and there, and even ask around for honest feedback, you’ll always have to wonder which opinions are being softened out of flattery, sharpened out of malice, or held back because it’s simply not their place. In Ancient Rome, the catoptric cistula was a kind of mirror-lined box whose interior appeared to expand into an infinite forest, library, or treasure room. Pronounced “kuh-top-trik tris-tes.”

xeno n. the smallest measurable unit of human connection, typically exchanged between passing strangers—a warm smile, a sympathetic nod, a shared laugh about some odd coincidence—moments that are fleeting and random but still contain powerful emotional nutrients that can alleviate the symptoms of feeling alone. Ancient Greek ξένος (xénos), alien, stranger. Pronounced “zee-noh.”

amuse-douche n. an activity that you’ve adored since you were a kid—riding bikes, reading books, taking pictures, cooking food—whose enjoyment dissolves on contact with hardcore fanatics’ ferocious obsession with technique. From amuse-bouche, a bite-size appetizer intended to tantalize the palate + douche. Pronounced “ah-mooz-doosh.”

Maybe we need to think of others as statues, and ourselves as fragile blobs of clay. Maybe that contradiction is what keeps us moving, wanting to better ourselves, and be more than what we are. Maybe it helps us keep our distance, to avoid too much friction as we brush past one another, trying to ignore how much damage we can do along the way. Or maybe our secret vulnerability is what draws us together. It gives each of us a primal need that only a friend can satisfy—someone you trust enough to be yourself with, who can help prop you up if needed, or remind you that you’re fine the way you are. And even if you’re not, that’s okay, too. Nothing is set in stone.

anechosis n. a state of exhaustion with continually being told what you want to hear, whether by marketers pandering to you or acquaintances afraid of causing offense; the longing for someone to have the heart to finally call you out on your bullshit, challenge your long-held assumptions, and push you to become a better person—which would be a far deeper kindness than trying to live and let live. From an-, against + echoes. Pronounced “an-uh-koh-sis.”

Eigenschauung n. the degree to which your view of the world is warped by your own presence in it, whether you’re a stunning beauty who assumes all strangers are chatty, a bully who thinks the world is perpetually at war, or a quivering leaf who walks around in an artificial cloud of deference; the awareness that although you’d like to think you perceive things cleanly and objectively, you’ve never felt the vibe of a room that doesn’t happen to have you in it. German eigen, inherent + Anschauung, view. Compare Weltanschauung, “worldview.” Your Weltanschauung is how you see the world; your Eigenschauung is a reflection of how the world sees you. Pronounced “ahy-guhn-shou-oong.”

ledsome adj. feeling lonely in a crowd; drifting along in a sea of anonymous faces but unable to communicate with or confide in any of them. Middle English leed, countrymen, compatriots + lonesome.

allope n. a mysterious aura of loneliness you feel in certain places; the palpable weight of all the lonely people secretly holed up in their houses and apartments, with a flickering blue glow cast up on their walls—so many of whom might just want someone to talk to, or just want to feel needed, and could be that for each other if only they could somehow connect. Short for “All the lonely people,” from the song “Eleanor Rigby” by the Beatles. Pronounced “al-uh-pee.”

scrough v. intr. to mindlessly perform a tedious task that nobody will ever notice, required by a bureaucracy that nobody fully owns, in pursuit of outcomes that nobody really wants. From scrow, to work hard + scroff, useless bits of leftover material + cog, a tiny forgettable element in a complicated machine. Pronounced “skrawg.”

aftergloom n. the pang of loneliness you feel the day after an intensely social event, as the glow of voices and laughter fades into a somber quiet. From afterglow + gloom.

anthrodynia n. a state of exhaustion with how cruel people can be, freely undercutting each other in ways that seem petty and gratuitous—which can sometimes trigger a countervailing sense of gratitude for things that are kind, sincere, forgiving, or unabashedly joyful. Ancient Greek ἄνθρωπος (ánthrōpos), humanity + ὀδύνη (odúnē), sorrow, anguish, pain. Pronounced “an-thruh-din-ee-uh.”

How strange it is that you’re born alone and die alone. That you alone must carry your own body, and your own name. Nobody else can feel the pain you feel, or hear the ringing in your ears, or will ever be able to share an unforgettable dream. You alone manage this particular storehouse of memories, being the only one to remember certain things, or the only one to forget.

mal de coucou n. a condition in which you have an active social life but very few close friends—people who you can trust, who you can be yourself with, who can help flush out the weird psychological toxins that tend to accumulate over time—which can eventually progress into a state of acute social malnutrition, where even if you devour an entire buffet of chitchat, you’ll still feel pangs of hunger. French mal, ache + de coucou, of the cuckoo bird. Coucou is also a French colloquialism for “Hey there!” Mal de coucou is a riff on the term mal de caribou, also known as rabbit starvation, in which you can starve to death even with unlimited access to lean meats like rabbit and caribou, after eating an excess of protein and not enough fat. Pronounced “mal duh koo-koo.”

poggled adj. shocked upon looking twice at something you see every day and catching an obvious detail you’d never noticed before—an old scar on your loved one’s knee, a wall in your house that’s apparently always been purple, or a prominent building that seemed to appear in your neighborhood overnight—which makes you wonder how much else of your world you might be missing, when you’re just barely there yourself. Macedonian поглед (pogled), a glimpse. Pronounced “pog-uhld.”

nyctous adj. feeling quietly overjoyed to be the only one awake in the middle of the night—sitting alone with a laptop and a cup of tea or strolling down the center line of an abandoned street—taking in the world like an empty theater between productions, stripped down to a simple black box, open to be whatever you want it to be. From Nyctocereus, a genus of cactus that blooms only at night. Pronounced “nik-tuhs.”

We should consider the idea that youth is not actually wasted on the young. That their heightened emotions make perfect sense, once you adjust for inflation.

vellichor n. the strange wistfulness of used bookstores, which are somehow infused with the passage of time—filled with thousands of old books you’ll never have time to read, each of which is itself locked in its own era, bound and dated and papered over like an old room the author abandoned years ago, a hidden annex littered with thoughts left just as they were on the day they were captured. From vellum, parchment + ichor, the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods in Ancient Greek mythology. Pronounced “vel-uh-kawr.”

keyframe n. a moment that felt innocuous at the time but ended up marking a diversion into a strange new era of your life—a chance meeting you’d think back on for years, a harmless comment that sparked an ongoing feud, an idle musing that would come to define your entire career—a monumental shift secretly buried among the tiny imperceptible differences between one ordinary day and the next. In video compression, a key frame defines major changes in a scene. Most frames in compressed video are in-betweens, marking subtle incremental changes, but key frames depict a whole new scene. This technique allows you to move forward without stopping to buffer, even if it makes it harder to rewind.

The photo itself means very little, in the end. Maybe all we ever wanted was the frame. So we could sit for a few minutes in a world of black-and-white, with clean borders that protect us from the rush of time. Like a tide pool just out of the reach of the waves—so clear and still, you can see your own reflection.

blinkback n. the disillusionment of revisiting a pop-culture touchstone of your youth and finding that it hasn’t aged well at all—having to confront its cringey dialogue, hand-puppet characterization, and wildly implausible plotting—which only makes you wonder what else in your mental fridge is past its expiration date. Appalachian English (dialect) blinked, soured milk + back, in the past.

Maybe it’s not so bad to dwell on the past, as long as it brings you closer to the truth. If nothing else, it’s a way to push back against the oversimplification of time. Trying to keep a memory alive, as something more than just a caricature of itself.

daguerreologue n. an imaginary conversation with an old photo of yourself, in which you might offer them a word of advice—to banish your worries, soak it all in, or shape up before it’s too late—or maybe just ask them if they thought you had done justice to the life they built for you. From daguerreotype, a form of early portrait photography + dialogue. Pronounced “duh-gair-uh-lawg.”

kerisl n. the sorrow of imagining the wealth of knowledge forever lost to history—knowing we’ll never hear the language of the Etruscans, the battle cry of the Sea Peoples, or the burial chants of the Neanderthals; that we’ll never read any more than a fragment of the works of Blake, Sappho, Aristotle, or Jesus; or enjoy the untold treasures of so many burned libraries and forgotten oral traditions and unrecorded songs—any of which might have made up the cornerstone of the canon, that we’d all be able to quote by heart and couldn’t imagine living without. A contraction of Kergeulen Islands. Roughly equidistant between Australia, Antarctica, and Madagascar, they are the only visible remnant of the Kergeulen microcontinent, which was submerged some twenty million years ago. Three times the size of Japan, it was once covered in dense conifer forests, with peaks reaching 2,000 meters above sea level, populated with strange and nameless fauna that must have called it home, before all traces were lost beneath the waves. Pronounced “kair-ahyl.”

etterath n. the feeling of emptiness after a long and arduous process is finally complete—having finished school, recovered from surgery, or gone home at the end of your wedding—which leaves you relieved that it’s over but missing the stress that organized your life into a mission. Norwegian etter, after + råtne, decay. Pronounced “et-er-rath.”

AVENOIR the desire to see your memories in advance

Your life would expand into epic drama. The colors would get sharper, the world would feel bigger. One by one, you’d patch things up with old friends, enjoying one last conversation before you meet and go your separate ways. Your family would drift slowly together, finding each other again. You’d fall out of old habits until you could picture yourself becoming almost anything. You’d graduate backward through school, and gradually learn to forget, first the little things, then the big things, gradually stripping away everything you didn’t need to know. You’d become nothing other than yourself, reveling in your own weirdness.

you will have left this world just as you found it. Nothing left to remember, nothing left to regret, with your whole life laid out in front of you, and your whole life left behind. French avenir, future + avoir, to have. Pronounced “av-uh-nwar.”

echthesia n. a state of confusion when your own internal sense of time doesn’t seem to match that of the calendar—knowing that something just happened though it apparently took place seven years ago, or that you somehow built up a decade of memories in the span of only a year and a half. Greek εχθές (echthés), yesterday + αἴσθησις (aísthēsis), sensation. Pronounced “ek-thee-zhuh.”

alpha exposure n. the otherworldly aura of seeing recordings of a friend in early childhood—catching those little gestures you’d one day come to know, so recognizable yet so foreign, searching their eyes for traces of who it is they’d eventually become. From alpha, the unstable initial release of software still being tested + exposure, the amount of time that light is allowed onto photographic film.

rasque n. a moment you instantly wish you could take back, feeling a pulse of dread right after crossing the point of no return—a blurted confession, a hurled insult, a final decision you’d been waffling over for months—wanting to take just one step backward in time, reverting to the way things used to be, in the halcyon days of just a minute ago. From rue, to regret + bourrasque, a tempest. Pronounced “rask.”

cullaways n. the scattering of memories that your brain is actively forgetting at any given moment, erasing them one by one with no input from you and no knowledge that it’s happening at all—which means that when you wake up in the morning, your past will feel imperceptibly altered, with no trace of what you ate last week, a party you attended ten years ago, or the first real conversation you had with your grandfather. From cull, to control the size of a herd by selectively killing some animals + away. Pronounced “kuhl-uh-weys.”

archimony n. anger about an injustice you only discovered long after the fact, after years have passed and everyone else has moved on, leaving you seething with an awkward and antiquated righteousness that you’re not sure what to do with, like a flywheel still spinning long after the engine is shut off. From archi-, earlier, primitive + acrimony, bitterness, animosity. Pronounced “ahr-kuh-moh-nee.”

spinning playback head n. the disorienting feeling of meeting back up with an old friend and realizing that you’ve become different people on divergent paths—that even though they’re standing right in front of you, the person you once knew isn’t really there anymore. After the part of a VCR that reads the signal on a videotape.

inerrata n. a kind of mistake you wouldn’t take back even if you could; the reluctance to disown a broken relationship or agonizing experience that has since become part of who you are, and trying to disown it would mean you’re trying to live some other life. Latin in-, not + errata, mistakes in a printed work. Pronounced “in-eh-rah-tuh.”

solla, solla, solla n. an incantation whispered privately to yourself to celebrate the loss of something or someone you loved, which almost makes it feel like a deliberate renunciation, consciously deciding to relinquish them to an earlier part of your life. Latin solla, whole, unbroken + Sesotho fasolla, to disconnect + Estonian las olla, let it be. Pronounced “suh-lah, suh-lah, suh-lah.”

the truth is, most of life is forgotten instantly, almost as it’s happening. Chances are that even a day like today will slip through your fingers and dissolve into oblivion, washed clean by the tides.

amentalio n. the sadness of realizing that you’re already forgetting sense memories of the departed—already struggling to hear their voice, picture the exact shade of their eyes, or call to mind the quirky little gestures you once knew by heart. Greek αμήν (amḗn), amen + μενταλιό (mentalió), locket. Pronounced “ah-men-tal-yoh.”

énouement n. 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. French énouer, to pluck defective bits from a stretch of cloth + dénouement, the final part of a story, in which all the threads of the plot are drawn together and everything is explained. Pronounced “ey-noo-mahn.”

nemotia n. the fear that you’re utterly powerless to change the world around you, looking on helplessly at so many intractable problems out there—slums that sprawl from horizon to horizon, daily headlines of an unstoppable civil war, a slick of air pollution blanketing the skyline—which makes the act of trying to live your own life feel grotesque and self-indulgent, as if you’re rubbernecking through the world. Slovenian nemočen, powerless. Pronounced “nih-moh-shah.”

LACHESISM longing for the clarity of disaster For a million years, we’ve watched the sky and huddled in fear. Feeling the thunder rumble deep in our chests, peering up at the storm clouds gathering on the horizon like an army preparing to invade. Even if you try filling the room with TV weather warnings to give yourself a sense of control, you can still taste the chaos hanging in the air. And yet, somewhere deep down, you find yourself rooting for the storm, hoping for the worst. 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.

forced to choose the one thing worth saving while everything else burns to ash, or send one final message to the people you love the most. Longing to watch society break down one pillar after the next, so you can find out what’s truly important, and let everything else fall away.

mogging folly n. the act of deliberately squandering your time, lazing about as if none of this is worth a damn, letting precious hours spool away slowly like the string of a runaway kite. From mog, to enjoy one’s self in a quiet, easy, comfortable manner + folly, a foolish act.

CHTHOSIS the awareness of how little we really know

beloiter v. intr. to look around in a state of mild astonishment that your life is somehow still going, as if a part of you had just assumed that your allotment of days would’ve been used up by now, standing there like a player at a slot machine, perpetually surprised that your winnings continue to trickle out, but not sure what you’re supposed to do now. From to be + to loiter, to hang around someplace with no particular agenda. Pronounced “bih-loi-ter.”

So it goes, and such is life, and this too shall pass. Anicca and anitya, mono no aware, sic transit gloria mundi, amen.