320 words that should exist but don’t

We know those feelings already, the ones we cannot describe even to ourselves. Here’s a book that makes up brand new words for them

When it’s time for another new year, the public plaza outside CentralWorld Mall is one of the places in Bangkok that puts up an eye-popping fireworks display that thousands used to come to watch. The last two years, however, I have viewed the spectacle from the safety of my condominium’s 38th floor, which gives a panoramic view of the city and its several celebrations. The terrace has been crowded both times but everyone was masked and standing two metres apart from each other.

CentralWorld itself was utterly empty and desolate, like a clown whose mother has passed away. I can guarantee, sight unseen, that you would have seen the same eerie landscape in other places that customarily throng with crowds—Times Square in New York, Oxford Street in London, the Taj Mahal, St Peter’s Square in Rome. 

At the height of the pandemic, I have walked Bangkok’s empty streets, passing just a few lonely tourists, sex workers and beggars with amputated limbs, and thought this is what the world would look like after the end of the world: bleak, barren, haunted, only memories where once there used to be happy people.

Most people you know would have beheld such a view in the last two years and felt such a feeling. Until recently, there was no word to describe it but now there is—kenopsia. It refers to the atmosphere of a place that is usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet. We have lived in kenopsian cities for two years.

Those who argued against vaccines and one day found themselves in an ICU with a ventilator would have felt a different and bittersweet feeling, énouement—having arrived at a future you never expected would happen to you and wishing you could go back and alert your past self.

All this brings me to John Koenig, about whom not much has been written. He lives in Minnesota with his wife and daughter and describes himself as a graphic designer though he is also known to be an editor, voice actor and writer with “a ferocious curiosity about the art and science of being human”. He looks slightly like a decent morph of Matt Damon and enjoys cycling along the Mississippi.

He also likes making up words that don’t exist for feelings that do. We know those feelings already, the ones we cannot describe even to ourselves, let alone friends and strangers—that moment when you start introducing someone and realise you’ve forgotten their name; the repetitive fatigue of dealing with the same soggy, boring, painful issues over and over again; the loneliness of knowing something important but unable to tell anyone about it.

In 2009, Koenig started a blog called The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, a home for strange words, either long dead and exhumed, or borrowed from other languages or simply made up by John Koenig, who studied etymology in college. The blog grew into a website and recently got published by Simon & Schuster as a book containing a little over 300 words that don’t exist but ought to.

Is it a good thing to make up new words?

One day, Koenig made up a new word, sonder. It describes the realisation that everyone around you is just as complex as you are—like an anthill, apparently simple outside but full of intricate tunnels and activity within. The word caught on and went viral, appearing online and in the real world, art galleries and symphonies, tee shirts and tattoos. Sonder, it seemed, filled a hole in the English language and had been eagerly welcomed.

Here’s another word that defies explanation, probably the most commonly understood English word—OK. Everything okay back there? I once thought it came from reversing kayo (or KO, a boxing acronym for ‘knockout’). Google attributes it to Orl Korrect, a light-hearted play on ‘All correct’. 

But perhaps it doesn’t matter where OK came from. It serves a unique need and is perfectly fit for purpose. It fills a hole in the language.

The most useful word I learned from this little lexicon came from its title. You might ask, “Why ‘Obscure Sorrows’?” and it would be a good question. What’s so sad about 300 new words? 
Well, thanks to Koenig, I now know that sadness is not what anyone thought it was, not a state of melancholy and blues at all. Sadness comes to us from a Latin word, satis, which also happens to be the root of sated and satisfied. Sadness originally meant a feeling of fullness coming from an experience of great intensity. It was a rich and complex state of mind, joy and grief, exuberance and cynicism, awareness and apathy all mixed together. True sadness was uplifting and fulfilling, not depressing.

One day after this pandemic is over, I hope I experience real, exhilarating sadness.

Here, viewed from there. C Y Gopinath, in Bangkok, throws unique light and shadows on Mumbai, the city that raised him. You can reach him at cygopi@gmail.com

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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper

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