Kenaway

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

Kenaway

n.
the longing to see how other people live their lives when they’re not in public; wishing you could tune in to the raw feed of another human existence, in all its messiness and solitude—shimmying in place while brushing their teeth, squabbling over where to put the shoes, talking out their problems on solitary commutes—if only to give you something to compare your own life against, and figure out whether you’re bizarrely normal or normally bizarre.

From ken, one’s range of knowledge + keep-away, a game in which one player tries to intercept a ball being tossed back and forth by two others. Pronounced “ken-uh-wey.”

Yeorie

a woman with tendrils of smoke moving across her face

Appriesse

a blurry image of a person looking at mounted images

Desanté

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

Tornomov

a cloudy sky and landscape

Dolorblindness

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

Wollah

a person with shapes raining on them