Have you ever wondered about the lives of each person you pass on the street, realizing that everyone is the main character in their own story, each living a life as vivid and complex as your own? That feeling has a name: “sonder.” Or maybe you’ve watched a thunderstorm roll in and felt a primal hunger for disaster, hoping it would shake up your life. That’s called “lachesism.” Or you were looking through old photos and felt a pang of nostalgia for a time you’ve never actually experienced. That’s “anemoia.”

If you’ve never heard of these terms before, that’s because they didn’t exist until John Koenig set out to fill the gaps in our language of emotion. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows “creates beautiful new words that we need but do not yet have,” says John Green, bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars. By turns poignant, relatable, and mind-bending, the definitions include whimsical etymologies drawn from languages around the world, interspersed with otherworldly collages and lyrical essays that explore forgotten corners of the human condition—from “astrophe,” the longing to explore beyond the planet Earth, to “zenosyne,” the sense that time keeps getting faster.

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is for anyone who enjoys a shift in perspective, pondering the ineffable feelings that make up our lives. This is the perfect gift for creatives, word nerds, and human beings everywhere.

I purchased a copy of this book for my own reading.

I’m a big fan of words and language. It’s so fascinating and frustrating in equal measure. Especially the English language. We’ve cobbled together our language having rummaged through countless other languages from our long and storied history. So when I discovered this intriguing book filled with “made up” words for all those situations, moments and feelings there aren’t words for.

I’ve always been a fan of interesting words like susurrus and petrichor. I love they way they describe sounds and smells and evoke strong emotions. This book takes this to another level, presenting words often amalgamated from words of many languages to create a word for something we don’t yet have.

They touch on sights, sounds and emotions in a way existing words cannot. The words presented are beautiful in their often melancholy fashion. They are filled with a gloomy depth that somehow made me reflect on many aspects of life often overlooked.

My rating: