The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Most of what we feel goes unspoken for lack of a word – the ache you can't place, the mood that arrives unannounced, the thought you've never said aloud.

John Koenig has spent over a decade naming them. What began as his blog in 2009 grew into a video series and, in 2021, a New York Times bestselling book, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.

Inspired by his project, this site allows all of us to create new words of our own – each built like it had always belonged. Some will describe something you were sure was yours alone. Most of us are carrying the same unnamed things, just quietly.

Read one, and you might feel a little less alone in it. Read a few, and the world starts to feel different.

"I read the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything."

—Steven Wright

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Featured Word

Etherness

n.

the wistful feeling of looking around a gathering of loved ones, all too aware that even though the room is filled with warmth and laughter now, it won’t always be this way—that the coming years will steadily break people away into their own families, or see them pass away one by one, until there comes a time when you’ll look back and try to imagine what it felt like to have everyone together in the same place.

From ether, an intoxicating compound that evaporates very quickly + togetherness. Pronounced “eth-er-nis.”

Featured Chapter:

Between Living and Dreaming