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

Vulture Shock

n.

the nagging sense that no matter how many days you spend exploring a foreign country, you never quite manage to step foot in it—instead floating high above the culture like a diver over a reef, too dazzled by its exotic quirks to notice its problems and complexities and banalities, while drawing from the heavy tank of assumptions that you carry on your back wherever you go.

From vulture, an animal that hovers high over its prey + culture shock, the confusion of having to adjust to a culture different than the one you’re used to.

Featured Chapter:

Between Living and Dreaming