A great prompt. Two words that remain with me are 'kolay gelsin', a Turkish expression literally meaning 'may it come easy to you'. It's used when you see someone working, at times like a greeting. It feels generous and caring.
Jeffrey, I can't say enough how much I love this expression. Not only because it's in Turkish, and I love that it takes me right back to Anatolia :) but its meaning is also so poignant, and it even feels like a blessing or prayer to wish for someone. Thanks so much for sharing it with us, and for getting "The Words that Remain" started last week on such a beautiful note 🙏
My absolute favorite word is Neflibata. It’s Portuguese for “cloud-walker” and means “one who walks in the clouds of their own imagination.” I found it via a tumblr site years ago called In Other Words, and it just perfectly summed up how I feel about myself and my creativity.
Kerani, I'm just enchanted by neflibata over here -- how have I never come across it before? Thank you for sharing such a beautiful word with us, my day feels a little brighter just thinking about being a cloud-walker ☁️🤍
My favorite word is “Fernweh”, a German word describing an ache for distant places you’ve never been, a craving for travel. I heard this word a few times growing up (my parents were German immigrants) but only when I got much older did I truly understand what the word meant. I travel a lot as a housesitter, but I often feel there will never be enough time to see all the places I want to see. Fernweh definitely describes how I feel much of the time.
For me, it's chuchichäschtli. (I've had to look up the spelling because I've never seen it written down!) The word in itself, Swiss-German for 'kitchen cupboard', doesn't have a very special meaning. But there's a reason why I remember it almost 20 years after hearing it. Here's the story:
When I was 16, I did an exchange year abroad in New Zealand. Throughout the year, the exchange program organised trips so that we could see more of the country and culture. It also gave a group of teenagers from all over the world a chance to meet and share their experiences. One night, on one of these trips, a bunch of us were hanging out after a long day of travel. I don’t remember how it started, but we ended up pointing at objects around us, asking “What’s that called in your language?”. We’d hear the word said in Spanish, Finnish, Japanese, Swiss-German, French and Dutch, and we tried to reproduce the foreign sounds to the best of our ability. Perhaps that was where my later interest in linguistics started!
My native language is a large part of the feeling I call ‘home’. It’s a comforting thought that wherever I travel, I always get to take that part of home with me. And if I’m lucky, I might be able to share some of it when someone I meet points at an object and asks me: “What do you call that in your language?”.
Laura, I can't tell you how much I love this story -- firstly just because I also spent a year in New Zealand, on a working holiday visa at the very start of my travels, and it brings back a lot of memories of camaraderie and connection.
But I was especially moved by what you wrote here: "My native language is a large part of the feeling I call ‘home’. It’s a comforting thought that wherever I travel, I always get to take that part of home with me."
I've never quite thought about the connection between language and home like that -- but now that Spanish is another language I feel "at home" in, and specifically the Uruguayan accent, I feel that same sense of being at home whenever I come across someone else speaking Spanish with the same accent.
Thanks so much again for sharing this memory and word with us, you've given me so much to think about and reflect on 🤍
PS -- I'm going to have to triple-check my spelling of chuchichäschtli when it's time to hand-letter it! 😅
Thanks for your reply Candace! I’d love to hear more about your time in New Zealand. Did you travel around or mostly stay in one place?
I suppose since Dutch is not a language you hear a lot when travelling the world, it might feel more meaningful when you come across a fellow Dutch speaker than if your native language is more widespread (e.g. English). But for more widespread languages, it might be more about the specific accent, like the Uruguayan Spanish you mention.
(Sometimes I wish I would’ve followed the linguistics path I could have been on...)
How many languages do you speak? And sorry for giving you such a hard word to spell!
For two years while I was in high school, my family lived in South Africa. A humorous phrase remains from that season: "baie dankie" means thank you very much in Afrikaans, and to our North American ears, it sounds like "buy a donkey." Ten years later, my family still says thank you by telling each other to go buy a donkey.
My family also uses the same phrase. Do you call pickup trucks “bakkies?” And peanut butter: “grondboontjiebotter.” “Naartjies?” (tangerines.) “Dorp.” Town!
I love this story, Sara! And how fascinating to hear you and your family lived in South Africa for two years -- I love that you all can keep sharing the words and phrases that remain from that adventure with each other, I imagine it must really keep memories of your time there alive. Thanks so much for sharing baie dankie with us 🤍
"adios" (to /with god?) never had the same meaning when decades ago as a young man in central Mexico we would pass peons (workers) on their burrows headed to fields or wherever and they would nod and murmur this greeting (and departure?)
Back when I was preparing for my college entrance examination, JEE, it was a hard and testing time with our lives dedicated to this singular purpose of getting into an IIT (a reputed technical institute in India). I was in one of the hardest places in my life, mentally and physically and it was hard to put myself out there and make new friends at a completely new city my new high school was in. However, I struck a peculiar but amazing friendship with this girl in my class over beautiful words. That was it! We'd just spend our lunch breaks discussing them and as if by design, we chanced upon 'The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows' where the author invents words and one that remains ingrained in my head is 'sonder'. In the author's definition, it is "the realisation that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own". I mean, come on!
We're still long-distance friends but the connection we have when we meet is so warm and comfortable, one that started with a single word and still continues!
Ragha, I loved everything about this story! I'm happy to say I've heard of "sonder" before, and I love that it played such a big part in bringing you and your friend together, especially during such an intense season of your life. Thank you for sharing the magic of sonder with us 🤍
I always come back to word sadhana which at its simplest means a spiritual practice and a detachment from the goal. It’s a paradox, one that invites you to give your all and free yourself from expectations.
Priya, you've got me so intrigued by sadhana now! And I'm especially fascinated to read that it shares the same Sanskrit root with sadhu, "go straight to a goal." I'll definitely be reading more about this, thank you :)
I'm a bit late to this thread, but here are two words I love - Namaste from Sanskrit, often used in the yoga tradition, meaning 'the light in me recognises the light in you' (or also translated as 'the divine in me recognises the divine in you' - an honouring of our underlying shared essence and interconnectedness. And from Māori - whānau - which is loosely translated as 'family', but has a much wider and all-encompassing meaning than the English. Our whānau is our community, our village, the people who love, support and connect to us.
Vicki, I'm so sorry to only be replying to your beautiful comment just now! But I loved reading about the meaning that those words hold for you, and I absolutely remember learning about whānau when I lived in New Zealand -- I'm so glad you shared it here, and I couldn't imagine a more powerful or timely word for us all to keep in mind (and on our hearts) right now 🤍🙏
If you asked me if I was superstitious, I would say absolutely not. I don't hesitate to step on cracks, fear black cats or the number 13, or embrace anything like that. But then there's "kinehora", a Yiddish expression that means, essentially and literally, that you should not invite the evil eye, but translates to something like not jinxing a positive result by making assumptions, or "counting chickens before they're hatched". I learned it from my father, who was not at all fluent in Yiddish, but had absorbed many words and expressions from the older members of his family, that he in turn passed on to me, sometimes in the most unlikely circumstances. So, when you want to acknowledge something that has gone well for you or someone you care for, or have a likely expectation of success, always mitigate it with an interjection of "kinehora". A little extra protection from the random forces of the evil eye never hurt anyone.
Joan, I can't tell you how much I enjoyed reading this story -- I loved learning about kinehora, and I especially love that you learned it from your father. Thanks so much for sharing it with us, I think the world is absolutely in need of extra protection right now 🙏🤍
Udzuzu, from chiChewa in Malawi. When you say it, it sounds almost exactly like the pesky little insects that buzz in your ear at night while sipping your blood and leaving welts in the morning that you mustn’t scratch.
What a fitting name indeed for those pesky creatures -- my husband especially has a personal vendetta against mosquitos, so I look forward to sharing udzuzu with him 😊
Murmuration! How did you know that's one of my favorite words as well, Julie? :) My husband and I were just talking the other night about how much we'd love to try and take Elena to see starling murmurations in England now that we're in Belgium. How you described them -- "a miracle of synchronized motion" -- was just gorgeous to read, thank you 🤍
So hard to make a choice here, as I LOVE WORDS. But, after much thought, I think "the word that remains" of late is the word you taught me, which I believe is Uruguyan Spanish, "memos," for cuddles. With that word came my first grandchild, first granddaughter, Elena Rose, and it is her memos that give me life.
Yes! I realize that asking you, queen of words and Webster's 1828, to choose just one word that has remained for you is a pretty impossible thing to ask :) But I love that you chose mimos! Elena can't wait for more mimos with you in December 🤍🤍
Quite a few months ago, I read an article about John Koenig, an author, who wrote a book called The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. He makes up words, also known as neologisms. The word that caught my attention was the word Sonder. It’s basically a word for a specific kind of realization. It’s a word that can make you feel emotional. Sonder means that you realize that everyone in your daily living orbit has a life just as complex and full of experiences as you do. If you think about this concept, you can really go deep in thought about it and feel kind of sad. You think about how much you are missing out on not knowing all these people. How much you may have in common with many of them or what you could possibly learn from them. How you may be living your life on the outside looking in. Living in today’s world is so very difficult for so many and daily news events bring so much sorrow to all of us. It is essential that humanity remembers that we all have a story, we all are important, and we are all connected to each other.
Shirley, I love that you wrote about sonder here -- Ragha also shared a wonderful story in her comment above about sonder, so it was a fun coincidence to read that that word holds so much meaning for you both.
Also, what you wrote here was so powerful to read: "It is essential that humanity remembers that we all have a story, we all are important, and we are all connected to each other." Thank you so much for sharing such beautiful and timely words 🤍🙏
Thank you so very much for your kind response. I hope you are having a wonderful time in your new life with many beautiful new adventures. Congratulations to you and Jose on the glorious news of having a new baby that will be welcomed into your family.
Likewise is a word that caught my attention one day, when my English wasn’t very good, at some random American TV show. I liked the sound of it and went to a dictionary to understand its meaning. Over the years, I was proud the first time I used it in a conversation, then in one of my stories, and hearing it still makes me smile. There’s something neutral and adaptable about it, that fits different situations and conveys something I find universal: the similarities and sameness we find, either good or bad, perpetrated, in a cycle, in a wave, just like we pronounce it. Likewise.
Pat, I loved reading this -- it felt like a mini-essay, perfect and complete just as it is. And thank you as well for inspiring me to think more about a word I haven't thought too much about before. But there are certain words and phrases I learned in Spanish that feel like my version of "likewise," and I completely understand the pride and satisfaction of being able to use them in conversation...first, with some thought, and then, after a little while, just naturally 🤍
After graduating college, I moved to a small village in Tanzania as a volunteer English teacher for a year. "Shikamoo" is a Swahili greeting (derived from Arabic) that is reserved only for elders or those in respected positions; it layers in respect, deference, and a honor for age and experience that is not typical in US culture. I just loved that word -- both giving it to others, and receiving it from young elementary students toddling down the road to school. Now that I live in Rwanda, I often miss the ability for a similar type of greeting.
We lived in Southern Africa and discovered a lot of Swahili words in chiChewa and Ndebele. I also enjoyed learning the “click” words in Ndebele, words with vowel and consonant combinations English speakers struggle with. Ndlovhu (elephant), ncube (monkey), ngwenya (crocodile), and one of my favorites, uxakuxaku, or custard apple, but usually, snot apple.
Marisa, I loved this story! And I so enjoyed learning about shikamoo -- I'm just reading now that it literally translates as 'touching your leg,' which definitely speaks to the respect and deference you mention. Thank you for sharing such a beautiful greeting with us, and the meaning it holds for you still 🤍
A great prompt. Two words that remain with me are 'kolay gelsin', a Turkish expression literally meaning 'may it come easy to you'. It's used when you see someone working, at times like a greeting. It feels generous and caring.
I LOVE THIS!!!!!
Jeffrey, I can't say enough how much I love this expression. Not only because it's in Turkish, and I love that it takes me right back to Anatolia :) but its meaning is also so poignant, and it even feels like a blessing or prayer to wish for someone. Thanks so much for sharing it with us, and for getting "The Words that Remain" started last week on such a beautiful note 🙏
My absolute favorite word is Neflibata. It’s Portuguese for “cloud-walker” and means “one who walks in the clouds of their own imagination.” I found it via a tumblr site years ago called In Other Words, and it just perfectly summed up how I feel about myself and my creativity.
Kerani, I'm just enchanted by neflibata over here -- how have I never come across it before? Thank you for sharing such a beautiful word with us, my day feels a little brighter just thinking about being a cloud-walker ☁️🤍
My favorite word is “Fernweh”, a German word describing an ache for distant places you’ve never been, a craving for travel. I heard this word a few times growing up (my parents were German immigrants) but only when I got much older did I truly understand what the word meant. I travel a lot as a housesitter, but I often feel there will never be enough time to see all the places I want to see. Fernweh definitely describes how I feel much of the time.
Yes! I've also loved "fernweh" ever since I first heard of the word -- it is such an evocative word, and I'm so glad you shared it here 🤍
For me, it's chuchichäschtli. (I've had to look up the spelling because I've never seen it written down!) The word in itself, Swiss-German for 'kitchen cupboard', doesn't have a very special meaning. But there's a reason why I remember it almost 20 years after hearing it. Here's the story:
When I was 16, I did an exchange year abroad in New Zealand. Throughout the year, the exchange program organised trips so that we could see more of the country and culture. It also gave a group of teenagers from all over the world a chance to meet and share their experiences. One night, on one of these trips, a bunch of us were hanging out after a long day of travel. I don’t remember how it started, but we ended up pointing at objects around us, asking “What’s that called in your language?”. We’d hear the word said in Spanish, Finnish, Japanese, Swiss-German, French and Dutch, and we tried to reproduce the foreign sounds to the best of our ability. Perhaps that was where my later interest in linguistics started!
My native language is a large part of the feeling I call ‘home’. It’s a comforting thought that wherever I travel, I always get to take that part of home with me. And if I’m lucky, I might be able to share some of it when someone I meet points at an object and asks me: “What do you call that in your language?”.
Laura, I can't tell you how much I love this story -- firstly just because I also spent a year in New Zealand, on a working holiday visa at the very start of my travels, and it brings back a lot of memories of camaraderie and connection.
But I was especially moved by what you wrote here: "My native language is a large part of the feeling I call ‘home’. It’s a comforting thought that wherever I travel, I always get to take that part of home with me."
I've never quite thought about the connection between language and home like that -- but now that Spanish is another language I feel "at home" in, and specifically the Uruguayan accent, I feel that same sense of being at home whenever I come across someone else speaking Spanish with the same accent.
Thanks so much again for sharing this memory and word with us, you've given me so much to think about and reflect on 🤍
PS -- I'm going to have to triple-check my spelling of chuchichäschtli when it's time to hand-letter it! 😅
Thanks for your reply Candace! I’d love to hear more about your time in New Zealand. Did you travel around or mostly stay in one place?
I suppose since Dutch is not a language you hear a lot when travelling the world, it might feel more meaningful when you come across a fellow Dutch speaker than if your native language is more widespread (e.g. English). But for more widespread languages, it might be more about the specific accent, like the Uruguayan Spanish you mention.
(Sometimes I wish I would’ve followed the linguistics path I could have been on...)
How many languages do you speak? And sorry for giving you such a hard word to spell!
For two years while I was in high school, my family lived in South Africa. A humorous phrase remains from that season: "baie dankie" means thank you very much in Afrikaans, and to our North American ears, it sounds like "buy a donkey." Ten years later, my family still says thank you by telling each other to go buy a donkey.
My family also uses the same phrase. Do you call pickup trucks “bakkies?” And peanut butter: “grondboontjiebotter.” “Naartjies?” (tangerines.) “Dorp.” Town!
Afrikaans has a lot of fun words.
Ahhh memories! Yes to bakkies and naartjies!
I love this story, Sara! And how fascinating to hear you and your family lived in South Africa for two years -- I love that you all can keep sharing the words and phrases that remain from that adventure with each other, I imagine it must really keep memories of your time there alive. Thanks so much for sharing baie dankie with us 🤍
"adios" (to /with god?) never had the same meaning when decades ago as a young man in central Mexico we would pass peons (workers) on their burrows headed to fields or wherever and they would nod and murmur this greeting (and departure?)
I love that "adios" evokes such richly layered memories for you, Appleton -- thank you for sharing it with us 🙏
Back when I was preparing for my college entrance examination, JEE, it was a hard and testing time with our lives dedicated to this singular purpose of getting into an IIT (a reputed technical institute in India). I was in one of the hardest places in my life, mentally and physically and it was hard to put myself out there and make new friends at a completely new city my new high school was in. However, I struck a peculiar but amazing friendship with this girl in my class over beautiful words. That was it! We'd just spend our lunch breaks discussing them and as if by design, we chanced upon 'The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows' where the author invents words and one that remains ingrained in my head is 'sonder'. In the author's definition, it is "the realisation that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own". I mean, come on!
We're still long-distance friends but the connection we have when we meet is so warm and comfortable, one that started with a single word and still continues!
Ragha, I loved everything about this story! I'm happy to say I've heard of "sonder" before, and I love that it played such a big part in bringing you and your friend together, especially during such an intense season of your life. Thank you for sharing the magic of sonder with us 🤍
I always come back to word sadhana which at its simplest means a spiritual practice and a detachment from the goal. It’s a paradox, one that invites you to give your all and free yourself from expectations.
Priya, you've got me so intrigued by sadhana now! And I'm especially fascinated to read that it shares the same Sanskrit root with sadhu, "go straight to a goal." I'll definitely be reading more about this, thank you :)
I'm a bit late to this thread, but here are two words I love - Namaste from Sanskrit, often used in the yoga tradition, meaning 'the light in me recognises the light in you' (or also translated as 'the divine in me recognises the divine in you' - an honouring of our underlying shared essence and interconnectedness. And from Māori - whānau - which is loosely translated as 'family', but has a much wider and all-encompassing meaning than the English. Our whānau is our community, our village, the people who love, support and connect to us.
Vicki, I'm so sorry to only be replying to your beautiful comment just now! But I loved reading about the meaning that those words hold for you, and I absolutely remember learning about whānau when I lived in New Zealand -- I'm so glad you shared it here, and I couldn't imagine a more powerful or timely word for us all to keep in mind (and on our hearts) right now 🤍🙏
If you asked me if I was superstitious, I would say absolutely not. I don't hesitate to step on cracks, fear black cats or the number 13, or embrace anything like that. But then there's "kinehora", a Yiddish expression that means, essentially and literally, that you should not invite the evil eye, but translates to something like not jinxing a positive result by making assumptions, or "counting chickens before they're hatched". I learned it from my father, who was not at all fluent in Yiddish, but had absorbed many words and expressions from the older members of his family, that he in turn passed on to me, sometimes in the most unlikely circumstances. So, when you want to acknowledge something that has gone well for you or someone you care for, or have a likely expectation of success, always mitigate it with an interjection of "kinehora". A little extra protection from the random forces of the evil eye never hurt anyone.
Joan, I can't tell you how much I enjoyed reading this story -- I loved learning about kinehora, and I especially love that you learned it from your father. Thanks so much for sharing it with us, I think the world is absolutely in need of extra protection right now 🙏🤍
Udzuzu, from chiChewa in Malawi. When you say it, it sounds almost exactly like the pesky little insects that buzz in your ear at night while sipping your blood and leaving welts in the morning that you mustn’t scratch.
What a fitting name indeed for those pesky creatures -- my husband especially has a personal vendetta against mosquitos, so I look forward to sharing udzuzu with him 😊
Today, it's murmuration. A word, a sound, a miracle of synchronized motion and sweet reminder of the endless wonders of this world.
Murmuration! How did you know that's one of my favorite words as well, Julie? :) My husband and I were just talking the other night about how much we'd love to try and take Elena to see starling murmurations in England now that we're in Belgium. How you described them -- "a miracle of synchronized motion" -- was just gorgeous to read, thank you 🤍
So hard to make a choice here, as I LOVE WORDS. But, after much thought, I think "the word that remains" of late is the word you taught me, which I believe is Uruguyan Spanish, "memos," for cuddles. With that word came my first grandchild, first granddaughter, Elena Rose, and it is her memos that give me life.
Yes! I realize that asking you, queen of words and Webster's 1828, to choose just one word that has remained for you is a pretty impossible thing to ask :) But I love that you chose mimos! Elena can't wait for more mimos with you in December 🤍🤍
Quite a few months ago, I read an article about John Koenig, an author, who wrote a book called The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. He makes up words, also known as neologisms. The word that caught my attention was the word Sonder. It’s basically a word for a specific kind of realization. It’s a word that can make you feel emotional. Sonder means that you realize that everyone in your daily living orbit has a life just as complex and full of experiences as you do. If you think about this concept, you can really go deep in thought about it and feel kind of sad. You think about how much you are missing out on not knowing all these people. How much you may have in common with many of them or what you could possibly learn from them. How you may be living your life on the outside looking in. Living in today’s world is so very difficult for so many and daily news events bring so much sorrow to all of us. It is essential that humanity remembers that we all have a story, we all are important, and we are all connected to each other.
Shirley, I love that you wrote about sonder here -- Ragha also shared a wonderful story in her comment above about sonder, so it was a fun coincidence to read that that word holds so much meaning for you both.
Also, what you wrote here was so powerful to read: "It is essential that humanity remembers that we all have a story, we all are important, and we are all connected to each other." Thank you so much for sharing such beautiful and timely words 🤍🙏
Thank you so very much for your kind response. I hope you are having a wonderful time in your new life with many beautiful new adventures. Congratulations to you and Jose on the glorious news of having a new baby that will be welcomed into your family.
Likewise is a word that caught my attention one day, when my English wasn’t very good, at some random American TV show. I liked the sound of it and went to a dictionary to understand its meaning. Over the years, I was proud the first time I used it in a conversation, then in one of my stories, and hearing it still makes me smile. There’s something neutral and adaptable about it, that fits different situations and conveys something I find universal: the similarities and sameness we find, either good or bad, perpetrated, in a cycle, in a wave, just like we pronounce it. Likewise.
Pat, I loved reading this -- it felt like a mini-essay, perfect and complete just as it is. And thank you as well for inspiring me to think more about a word I haven't thought too much about before. But there are certain words and phrases I learned in Spanish that feel like my version of "likewise," and I completely understand the pride and satisfaction of being able to use them in conversation...first, with some thought, and then, after a little while, just naturally 🤍
After graduating college, I moved to a small village in Tanzania as a volunteer English teacher for a year. "Shikamoo" is a Swahili greeting (derived from Arabic) that is reserved only for elders or those in respected positions; it layers in respect, deference, and a honor for age and experience that is not typical in US culture. I just loved that word -- both giving it to others, and receiving it from young elementary students toddling down the road to school. Now that I live in Rwanda, I often miss the ability for a similar type of greeting.
We lived in Southern Africa and discovered a lot of Swahili words in chiChewa and Ndebele. I also enjoyed learning the “click” words in Ndebele, words with vowel and consonant combinations English speakers struggle with. Ndlovhu (elephant), ncube (monkey), ngwenya (crocodile), and one of my favorites, uxakuxaku, or custard apple, but usually, snot apple.
Marisa, I loved this story! And I so enjoyed learning about shikamoo -- I'm just reading now that it literally translates as 'touching your leg,' which definitely speaks to the respect and deference you mention. Thank you for sharing such a beautiful greeting with us, and the meaning it holds for you still 🤍