English speakers sometimes like to think of English as the only language you will ever need, but last week Merriam-Webster, the dictionary compilers, have been intent on finding where it falls short. A tweet asked readers to supply favourite words in other languages for which there is no English translation. The thousands of responses revealed not only descriptive gaps in our lexicon, but also defining cultural deficiencies.
We probably already know from bright-eyed Danes about the difficulty of translating their catch-all word for contentment, “hygge”, and from heartfelt Welsh speakers about the unutterable depth of longing expressed in “hiraeth”; our limp equivalents “cosiness” and “nostalgia” don’t come close. But how have we got by without such beautiful concepts as the Arabic “soubhiyé” (“a moment in the morning when you are the only one awake in the house and can enjoy a cup of coffee before the day starts”) or “sobremesa” (that delicious time in Spain when a meal has ended but the conversation hasn’t) or, for that matter, the widely understood but uncoined Finnish concept of “kalsarikännit”: getting drunk at home alone in your pants?
The Merriam-Webster responses were a reminder not only of the language-defined limitations of our experience – our brief “hug” is no match for the all-encompassing Mexican “apapachar” – but also the ways that our vocabulary is always playing hopeless catch-up with our lives. How, I wondered, as I idly scrolled the responses, is there no word for lost hours spent down internet rabbit holes pretending you are “doing research” (“deloogling”?) or, say, for that feeling of believing you are finally getting somewhere with an idea, while at the same time forgetting what the idea itself was (the Hawaiians have a useful notion here: “akihi”, which roughly translates as “appearing to listen closely to directions and then setting off the wrong way”). And then, with one eye on the news, how is “hancocking” not already on all our tongues, to describe that experience of foolishly confiding all your unfathomable inadequacies to someone you know you can’t trust, and really wishing you hadn’t.
Of course there have been efforts to fast-track English to keep up with changing emotions. John Koenig started his Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows as a digital community more than a decade ago, to find terms to capture the particular moods of contemporary life. The site really came into its own during lockdown when some of Koenig’s definitions felt usefully prophetic: “kenopsia”, for example, the eeriness of a shopping mall emptied of people. Or “solysium”, the delusions arising from spending way too much time by yourself.
If Koenig’s coinages tend to have an existential drift, a corrective is always available in Douglas Adams and John Lloyd’s indelible Meaning of Liff volumes that long ago provided the true meaning of all those place names you drive past on country lanes. Reading through those books now is, above all, to wonder how so few of those unimprovable additions to the language have not gained currency: how is “spoffard” (“an MP whose contribution to politics is limited to saying ‘hear, hear’”) not more widely understood? And how have I got this far in life without realising that most of my days involve inevitable “farnham”: “The feeling that you get at about four o’clock in the afternoon when you haven’t got nearly enough done.”
• Tim Adams is an Observer columnist
