The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

It seems that I should begin a new blogging category called, Things I’ve only just caught up on. Am I the last person to discover this on-line dictionary, that attempts to ‘fill a hole in the language‘? Maybe not, there are an awful lot of ideas getting threaded into the web.

According to Wikipedia, John Koenig began his Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows in 2006, when he was trying to write poetry, and couldn’t find a precise word for the emotion he wanted to convey. I’ve been there, convinced that there should be a single, perfect word for some feeling or idea I’ve got, if only I could figure out the correct search terms for the Thesaurus.

Eventually I generally conclude that there are two solutions to my problem:

1. I’m in the early stages of dementia.
2. There never was such a word and the truth is:
   1. I’ve confused another word with it that sounds like it might mean what I want, but actually conveys something opposite, or lateral. This means that:
      1. I don’t read enough
      2. I don’t think about what I read, often enough
3. Which leads me to realise that I can’t count, even when I use the alphabet in more than one form, so:
   1. It is possible I’m experiencing the early stages of dementia.
   2. I’m obsessing about a common phenomena that I’ve experienced throughout my life and I should ‘get over it’ and move on.

All of which doesn’t stop me from being haunted by the existence of that word I was looking for in the first place, and that’s where John Koenig’s dictionary comes into play. By the simple fact of it’s existence, it offers reassurance.

Firstly, because clearly I’m not alone.

Secondly, because a lexicographer is busy creating some of the words that I might need. For instance I think this comes close to my lost-vocabulary problem:

fitzcarraldo an image that somehow becomes lodged deep in your brain—maybe washed there by a dream, or smuggled inside a book, or planted during a casual conversation—which then grows into a wild and impractical vision that keeps scrambling back and forth in your head like a dog stuck in a car that’s about to arrive home, just itching for a chance to leap headlong into reality.

In case this seems too wordy, Koenig has also created some visual definitions that could be used to fill in the gaps in my vocabulary.

Why do I love words? Because they’re playful, like us, and continually evolving.