![]() ![]() Discover the definition of a new emotion, and you’ll almost certainly find yourself re-organizing your inner world, seeing vague or amorphous sensations as concrete instances of a recognizable category of experience. It’s a long-held belief among therapists that learning to name our emotions can ultimately make them less volatile and uncomfortable.īut less spoken about is the other side of this coin: that learning new words for emotions can also bring feelings to life. Along with exasperating everyone I know with endless questions, one of the effects of this process is that I’ve come to appreciate some of the more peculiar connections between the words we use to talk about feelings, and the emotions we actually feel. Over the last few years I’ve hunted down words for emotions I didn’t even know I had. Maybe you even have a touch of basorexia-a sudden desire to kiss someone. Or worry about your ambiguphobia (a horror of being misunderstood that leads to excessive clarification and re-clarification). Maybe you are familiar with Hygge (the Danish word for feeling snug and cosy inside with friends when it’s cold outside). Perhaps you’ve experienced the feeling the French sociologist Roger Caillois called “ilinx”-an elated disorientation caused by random acts of destruction, such as kicking over the office recycling bin. And there are others, too, which are so peculiar we don’t even have a name for them. But many disappear before we’ve had a chance to spot them, like the nostalgic twinge that makes you choose a familiar brand in the supermarket. Some emotions, it’s true, really do wash the world in a single color, like the terror felt as the car skids. Could you say, precisely, what you’re feeling right now? Is your stomach tight and knotted at the thought of the surprise you’re planning tonight? Is there an echo of sadness about that letter you received this morning? Are you feeling smug or resentful, gleeful or suspicious-or all of these at once? Trying to name and categorize our emotions can feel just as impossible. Any topology of the clouds, he was forced to admit, would always be “an arrangement more of convenience than true description.” In his diary, he wrote proudly that he “bottled skies” as carefully as his father had bottled sherries, and set about arranging his observations according to new meteorological categories. He noted how some processed lazily and others seemed purposeful. He sketched their purple wisps and scarlet streaks. The word is of French origin-François Rabelais in Gargantua uses the phrase à la venue des cocquecigrues to mean "never." Charles Kingsley later translated that phrase in The Water Babies, when the fairy Bedonebyasyoudid reports that there are seven things he is forbidden to tell until "the coming of the Cocqcigrues."Īlthough we've reached the end of this list, the dictionary is dark and full of terrors, and you'll only find an end to the frightful creatures contained therein upon the coming of the Coquecigrue.The Victorian critic John Ruskin contemplated the clouds every morning. Unfortunately, our website cannot support the coquecigrue in all its glory, so click here to view the full effect. These hippogriffs and other monsters are painted on the Chinese lanterns hung up in the pastry-cooks' shops." - The Journal of Education, OctoDefinition:Īn imaginary creature regarded as an embodiment of absolute absurdity About the Word:Īs the embodiment of absolute absurdity, no other creature could provide the final word of this list of monsters. "Coquecigrue is one of the 'fearful wildfowl' of Rabelais' invention.
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