Aulasy

a blurry image of a house on the road

Aulasy

n.
the sadness that there’s no way to convey a powerful memory to people who weren’t there at the time—driving past your childhood home to show it to a friend, or pointing at a picture of a loved one you lost, only to realize that to them it’s just another house, just another face.

A contraction of auld lang syne, which is Scots for “times long past”—fragments of which are still present in aulasy, but the meaning has been lost. Pronounced “awl-uh-see.”

Ghough

Cover image for the Ghough word card on the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Funkenzwangsvorstellung

Funkenzwang-svorstellung

Cover image for the Funkenzwangsvorstellung word card on the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Aulasy

a blurry image of a house on the road

Trumspringa

Cover image for the Trumspringa word card on the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Tillid

Cover image for the Tillid word card on the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Nyctous

a person walking in the middle of a street