Making Meaning & Personal Dictionaries

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Lately I’ve been reading The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig. This is in the publisher’s description, “The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a compendium of new words for emotions. Its mission is to shine a light on the fundamental strangeness of being a human being.”

Essentially, this is a collection of words created by the author to describe nuanced experiences and feelings. Often we don’t have words to name, describe or explain the the full range of human emotions and experiences. It is a different kind of reference book— intelligent and perceptive, but also wry, witty and often reads like poetry.

I found the book interesting, delightful and wonderfully word nerdy, and the kind of book you read in small sips rather than big gulps. I was also surprised by a sense of relief when encountering a new word that caught something true about an experience.

Here are a couple of short examples of words in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows By John Koenig.      

“looseleft adj. feeling a sense of loss upon finishing a good book, sensing the weight of the back cover locking away the lives of the characters you’ve gotten to know so well.                                                                                                                                               Enouement: The bitter sweetness of having arrived here in the future, seeing how things turned out, but unable to tell your past self.”