I Never Knew There Was a Word for It - Adam Jacot De Boinod [15]
Salt of the earth
What a shame that we can’t all be uncomplicatedly good: for example, when you’re acting with meraki (a Greek word) you’re doing something with soul, creativity or love, and putting something of yourself into what you’re doing:
tubli (Estonian) orderly, strong, capable, hard-working, persistent, productive, setting an example to others, behaving properly or having will power
ondinnonk (Iroquoian, USA) the soul’s innermost benevolent desires or the angelic parts of human nature
Indonesian two in one
Indonesian has many words that combine two aspects of character or appearance into a single simple word. So you might well know someone who is ricuh, that is, chaotic and noisy; pandir, stupid, but innocent and honest; mungil, tiny and pretty; merana, lonely and miserable; lencir, slim and tall; bangkot, old and cantankerous; or klimis, smooth and shiny.
Tall poppies
Sweden is a country that not only values the concept of a lack of extremes but even has a word for it – lagom. In this society, it’s generally not thought to be good to stand out too much. Everything and everyone is supposed to be just lagom – which is not to say ‘boring’, so much as ‘not too much and not too little’, ‘not good and not bad’, ‘okay’, ‘just right’, ‘so-so’.
So so similar
The concept of ‘so-so’ is found in many languages, and often in a similarly repetitive form: it’s tako tako in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, aixi aixi in Catalan, cosi cosi in Italian, wale wale in Chipewyan (Canada), hanter hanter in Cornish, thik thik in Gujarati (India), hai hao in Mandarin, jako tako in Polish, ithin ithin in Sinhala (Sri Lanka), soyle boyle in Turkish, etsi ketsi in Greek, atal atal in Occitan (France), asina asina in Asturian (Spain), elae belae in Azeri (Azerbaijan) and azoy azoy in Yiddish.
Happy talk
Good or bad, modest or conceited, hard-working or lazy, all of us experience the highs of emotion:
tout baigne dans l´huile (French) hunky-dory (literally, everything is bathing in oil)
ai bu shishou (Chinese) so delighted with something that one can scarcely take one’s eyes off it
ichigo-ichie (Japanese) the practice of treasuring each moment and trying to make it perfect
pulaka (Tulu, India) hair that stands on end with ecstasy
bas-bhualadh (Scottish Gaelic) clapping one’s hands from joy or grief
tuman (Indonesian) to find something enjoyable and want to have it again
mubshar (Persian) to be exhilarated with good news
zhuxing (Chinese) to add to the fun
Side-splitting
sekaseka (Bemba, Congo and Zambia) to laugh without reason
tergelak (Malay) laughing unintentionally
katahara itai (Japanese) laughing so much that one side of your abdomen hurts
Enraptured
The Japanese have particularly wonderful words for the deep joy that can come as a response to beauty: uttori is to be enraptured by the loveliness of something; aware describes the feelings created by ephemeral beauty; yoin is the reverberating sensation after the initial stimulus has ceased; while yugen goes further, describing an awareness of the universe that triggers feelings too deep and mysterious for words.
Down in the dumps
The causes of unhappiness are many, varied and not always easy to put your finger on:
termangu-mangu (Indonesian) sad and not sure what to do
mono-no-aware (Japanese) appreciating the sadness of existence
avoir le cafard (French) to be down in the dumps (literally, to have the cockroach)
litost (Czech) the state of torment created by the sudden realization of one’s own misery
kusat’ sebe lokti (Russian) to cry over spilt milk (literally, to bite one’s elbows)
emakou (Gilbertese, Kiribati) a secret sorrow
bel hevi (Tok Pisin, Papua New Guinea) the heavy sinking feeling that often accompanies extreme sadness (literally, belly heavy)
Weltschmerz
Weltschmerz is another untranslatable German word. It broadly means world-weariness, but carries with it both a sense of sorrow at the evils of the world and a yearning for something better. Aspects of it can be found in the Welsh hiraeth, a mingled