Five people standing against a brick wall, each holding a circular sign with a different emoticon face in front of their heads — from left to right: angry (purple), sad (red/pink), neutral (white), happy (white), and laughing (yellow).

(Rawpixel.com / Shutterstock.com)

10 Human Emotions You Didn’t Know Had Names

3 Sep 2017 | By INSH

The general consensus is humans have six basic emotions, but within those recognized emotive states lie a few (usually nameless until now) inbetweeners.

Defining emotions and moods have a history of being something we have had issues with over the years, a downside to being an emotionally complex species.

Doctors of a bygone era used to think our organs controlled our moods; the kidneys were in charge of fear, for example, which would explain why some of us pee ourselves when we’re frightened.

Maybe that’s why in order to try and fully explain everything that we feel as humans some new words had to be introduced into the english language. Now, pardon me while I go sit in the corner and sonder for a spell.

SONDER:

The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

An aerial view of a massive, densely packed crowd of people with the word 'SONDER' displayed in large white capital letters across the center of the image.

(photo by Intersting Sh!t)

OPIA:

The ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable—their pupils glittering, bottomless and opaque—as if you were peering through a hole in the door of a house, able to tell that there’s someone standing there, but unable to tell if you’re looking in or looking out.

A close-up profile shot of a man and woman facing each other intimately, foreheads nearly touching, with the word 'OPIA' displayed in white capital letters in the center — a soft, muted-tone image.

(photo by Intersting Sh!t)

MONACHOPSIS:

The subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place, as maladapted to your surroundings as a seal on a beach—lumbering, clumsy, easily distracted, huddled in the company of other misfits, unable to recognize the ambient roar of your intended habitat, in which you’d be fluidly, brilliantly, effortlessly at home.

An aerial view of blurred figures walking across a pale urban plaza, casting long shadows, with the word 'MONACHOPSIS' displayed in large white capital letters across the center of the image.

(photo by Intersting Sh!t)

LIBEROSIS:

The desire to care less about things—to loosen your grip on your life, to stop glancing behind you every few steps, afraid that someone will snatch it from you before you reach the end zone—rather to hold your life loosely and playfully, like a volleyball, keeping it in the air, with only quick fleeting interventions, bouncing freely in the hands of trusted friends, always in play.

A long, empty institutional corridor with white walls and a reflective floor, scattered papers lying on the ground, leading to a distant doorway, with the word 'LIBEROSIS' displayed in large white capital letters across the center of the image.

(photo by Intersting Sh!t)

RUBATOSIS:

The unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat, whose tenuous muscular throbbing feels less like a metronome than a nervous ditty your heart is tapping to itself, the kind that people compulsively hum or sing while walking in complete darkness, as if to casually remind the outside world, I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.

A close-up of one person's fingers gently pressing on another person's inner wrist, as if feeling for a pulse, with the word 'RUBATOSIS' displayed in large white capital letters across the center of the image.

(photo by Intersting Sh!t)

KENOPSIA:

The eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that’s usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet—a school hallway in the evening, an unlit office on a weekend, vacant fairgrounds—an emotional afterimage that makes it seem not just empty but hyper-empty, with a total population in the negative, who are so conspicuously absent they glow like neon signs.

A solitary figure standing in the center of a vast, abandoned brutalist structure with an intricate circular domed ceiling, illuminated by a single beam of light, with the word 'KENOPSIA' displayed in large white capital letters across the center of the image.

(photo by Intersting Sh!t)

CHRYSALYSM:

The amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm, listening to waves of rain pattering against the roof like an argument upstairs, whose muffled words are unintelligible but whose crackling release of built-up tension you understand perfectly.

Raindrops on a dark window pane with a soft, blurred warm light glowing in the background, with the word 'CHRYSALISM' displayed in large white capital letters across the center of the image.

(photo by Intersting Sh!t)

ANECDOCHE:

A conversation in which everyone is talking but nobody is listening, simply overlaying disconnected words like a game of Scrabble, with each player borrowing bits of other anecdotes as a way to increase their own score, until we all run out of things to say.

Four people inside a car all talking animatedly at once — a driver and passenger in front, two people in the back seat — each appearing to speak without listening to the others, with the word 'ANECDOCHE' displayed in large white capital letters across the center of the image.

(photo by Intersting Sh!t)

ELLIPSISM:

The sadness that you’ll never be able to know how history will turn out, that you’ll dutifully pass on the joke of being alive without ever learning the punchline—the name of the beneficiary of all human struggle, the sum of the final payout of every investment ever made in the future—which may not suit your sense of humor anyway and will probably involve how many people it takes to change a lightbulb.

A downward view of a person's brown leather boots standing on a floor covered with shattered glass and debris, with the word 'ELLIPSISM' displayed in large white capital letters across the center of the image.

(photo by Intersting Sh!t)

OCCHIOLISM:

The awareness of the smallness of your perspective, by which you couldn’t possibly draw any meaningful conclusions at all, about the world or the past or the complexities of culture, because although your life is an epic and unrepeatable anecdote, it still only has a sample size of one, and may end up being the control for a much wilder experiment happening in the next room.

Silhouettes of a family — two adults and a child — holding hands on a beach shoreline, gazing up at a surreal sky filled with swirling galaxies and cosmic clouds, with the word 'OCCHIOLISM' displayed in large white capital letters across the center of the image.

(photo by Intersting Sh!t)