Whither the Woke?
30th December 2021
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a collection of ingenuous words devised by a young man, John Koenig, who spent seven years reflecting on gaps in the English language. He was especially interested in situations that spark an emotion that feels distinct from the general flow. English has taken on words from other languages, such as the German schadenfreude, for the pleasure we feel in an opponent’s misfortune. The elections this month lit up schadenfreude circuits like Times Square among conservatives. But Koenig rightly suspected that Americans are struggling with an acute shortage of words that discriminate the fine shades of feeling that separate the “tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm” (chrysalism) and plata rasa, “the lulling sounds of a running dishwasher.”