There's a Word for That
Our languages are ever evolving. This means that words get forgotten as they fall out of fashion or usefulness, and new words are created all the time to fit our needs. Liesl Schillinger suggests 'roborage' to describe the anger that is caused by repetitive telemarketing calls in "Wordbirds: An Irreverent Lexicon for the 21st Century." In addition to words that might be forgotten or brand new, there are words that exist in other languages that have no English counterpart. 'Komorebi' is the Japanese word for the sunlight that filters through trees, according to Ella Frances Sanders' "Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World."
Check out one of the books below to expand your vocabulary.
Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World, by Ella Frances Sanders
An artistic collection of more than 50 drawings featuring unique, funny, and poignant foreign words that have no direct translation into English.
The Meaning of Tingo and Other Extraordinary Words from Around the World, by Adam Jacot de Boinod
A garden of delights for the word obsessed: a funny, amazing and even profound world tour of the best of all those strange words that don't have a precise English equivalent, the ones that tell us so much about other cultures' priorities and preoccupations and expand our minds.
Schottenfreude: German Words for the Human Condition, by Ben Schott
Schottenfreude is a unique, must-have dictionary, complete with newly coined words that explore the idiosyncrasies of life as only the German language can.
In Other Words: A Language Lover's Guide to the Most Intriguing Words Around the World, by Christopher J. Moore
In Other Words is a unique collection of well-known and absolutely obscure "untranslatables"--linguistic gems that convey a feeling or notion with satisfying precision yet resist simple translation. This quirky lexicon of hard-to-translate words give the reader a new way to look at the world and how words relate to us.
Wordbirds: An Irreverent Lexicon for the 21st Century, by Liesl Schillinger; illustrations by Elizabeth Zechel
This charming and whimsically illustrated book of newly minted words--on politics and the media, love and friendship, work, play, family, fashion, and city life--presents a necessary vocabulary for the ever-changing customs of the young millennium.
Horologicon: A Day's Jaunt Through the Lost Words of the English Language, by Mark Forsyth
Do you wake up feeling rough? Then you're philogrobolized. Find yourself pretending to work? That's fudgelling. The Horologicon (or book of hours) contains the most extraordinary words in the English language, arranged according to what hour of the day you might need them.
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