“Words are world builders.”

I read that in a book last fall. Unfortunately, I can’t remember which book. But I do remember the words.

For years, I have carried a notebook and pen with me, always eager to jot down quotes, book titles, passages, poems, and more that captured my attention. This year, I added a new list: words that I learned from books I am currently reading. I assembled a long list in January but encountered no new words in February. I wonder what March will bring!

• Tacenda: things best left unsaid
• Cafune: the act of running your fingers through the hair of someone you love
• Egalitarianism: a perspective that emphasizes equality and equal treatment
• Janus: the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames, and endings
• Sophrosyne: an ancient Greek concept of an ideal of excellence of character and soundness of mind
• Coking: the covert coal into coke
• Sapiosexual: a person who finds intelligence sexually attractive
• Parochialism: a limited or narrow outlook, especially focused on a local area; narrow-mindedness
• Aphorism: a pithy observation that contains a general truth (e.g., if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it)
• Hectoring: talking in a bullying way
• Leitmotif: a recurrent theme throughout a musical or literary composition, associated with a particular person, idea, or situation
• Chthonic: concerning, belonging to, or inhabiting the underworld
• Orthogonal: of or involving right angles
• Biophilia: an innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes
• Dolorous: feeling or expressing great sorrow or distress
• Scrim: strong, coarse fabric, chiefly used for heavy-duty lining or upholstery
• Eschatological: relating to death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and humankind
• Arcane: understood by few; secret or mysterious
• Dern: hidden or secret
• Toska: Russian word roughly meaning sadness or melancholia
• Lacuna: an unfilled space; a gap
• Kalon: beautiful, good, noble
• Anagapesis: loss of feelings for someone who was formerly loved
• Aesthete: a person who has a special appreciation of art and beauty
• Yugen: an awareness of the Universe that triggers emotional responses too deep and powerful for words
• Gumusservi: Turkish for moonlight shining on the water
• Cryptoscopophilia: the urge to look through the windows of homes upon walking past them
• Procellous: stormy, as the sea
• Metonia: change in one’s way of life resulting from penitence or spiritual conversion
• Tarantism: a psychological illness characterized by an extreme impulse to dance
• Marcid: lean, withered, wasting away
• Balter: to dance or tread clumsily
• Moira: individual destiny; fate
• Koi no yokan: the feeling when two people meet for the first time and they have an intuitive sense that they will fall in love
• Eccedentesiast: a person who fakes a smile
• Prosopagnosia: face blindness, a condition where you have difficulty recognizing people’s faces
• Oenomel: a source of strength and sweetness
• Phosphenes: the luminous floating stars, zigzags, swirls, spirals, squiggles, and other shapes you see when closing your eyes tightly and pressing them with your fingers
• Kilig: a feeling of exhilaration or elation caused by an exciting or romantic experience
• Chasmophile: lover of nooks and crannies
• Selcouth: off, unusual, or extraordinary
• Atelophobia: an extreme fear of imperfection
• Morosis: idiocy, stupidity
• Solivagant: to wander alone
• Drapetomania: an uncontrollable impulse to wander or run away from a slave master
• Smurr: a drizzly fog or mist
• Susurrus: a whispering sound
• Marcescent: clinging to withered leaves
• Murmuration: a swirling flock of starlings
• Ruderal: a plant growing in rubble
• Logophile: a lover of words
• Latibule: a hiding place; a place of safety and comfort
• Saudade: a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia that is supposedly characteristic of the Portuguese or Brazillian temperament
• Sciamachy: an argument or conflict with an imaginary opponent
• Thanatophobia: an intense fear of death or the dying process
• Ukiyo-e: a school of Japanese art depicting subjects from everyday life
• Querencia: a place from which one’s strength is drawn, where one feels at home; the place where you are your most authentic self
• Lagom: just the right amount
• Nyctophilia: being very happy and comfortable in the dark
• Basorexia: the strong, sudden urge to kiss someone
• Ibrat: wisdom to learn from experience
• Wabi sabi: an ancient and deeply held philosophy. Wabi sabi sees the beauty of imperfection, appreciates simplicity, and accepts that change is inevitable
• Lypophrenia: a vague feeling of sorrow or sadness
• Sonder: the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own
• Meraki: the essence of yourself
• Philophobia: a fear of love
• Alexithymia: difficulty experiencing, identifying, and expressing emotions
• Redamancy: a love returned in full; the act of loving the one who loves you; the act of loving in return
• Nepenthes: something capable of causing oblivion of grief or suffering
• Duende: the power to attract through personal magnetism and charm
• Finifugal: actively hating or prolonging something’s end
• Hiraeth: deep longing for something, especially one’s home
• Clinomania: an obsession to want to stay in bed all the time