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Word Art

Read this interview with the author of The Dictionary of Obscure words on why he felt it necessary to make up words. The idea is to give word to a somewhat complicated feeling or emotion for which there is not a single word. The author created one. It would be considered a success if others agree it makes sense and conveys the meaning it is supposed to. That is not so trivial. Specially if one person on their own goes about making up a dictionary of words that needed to exist (in their mind) but don't. That is probably not how the words have existed in the dictionary for a while came to be there. 

I defined a word called “sonder,” the awareness that everyone around you is the main character of their own story, but to you they’re just extras in the background. Sonder caught on in a way that none of the others have. Often, I’ll run into sonder being used in earnest online, and I’ve even overheard it being used in conversation at cafés.


That changed everything for me because we usually tend to accept the words that we are given in life. The words we use to build our lives were handed to us in the crib or picked up on the playground. Once you realize that, you realize all of our words were basically made up. All of them. The word “robot” didn’t exist until someone made it up, and now that’s part of our parlance. Dr. Seuss invented the word “nerd” because he needed a rhyme


It is definitely a fun game to play with words and lets anyone create receptacles for things they don't want to express in long form and instead have a word for it. 

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