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Words that don't exist in English but should.

Words with friends.

There are many situations in life where the English language lets you down.

Like when you experience the urge to pinch a cute baby animal, the despair of looking worse after a new haircut, or the frustration of coming up with a razor-sharp comeback… several hours after you needed it.

While languages like Japanese, German and Mandarin have come up with convenient verbal expressions for all of these situations, our inadequate language leaves us fumbling for the RIGHT term.

Click through this sensational gallery for more words to drop into your dinner party conversations. Some of the words are smart, some of them silly and some of them are simply, beautiful.
(Yagan indigenous language of Tierra del Fuego) – The wordless, yet meaningful look shared by two people who both desire to initiate something but are both reluctant to start.
(Russian) – Is often used to describe the sensation of great spiritual anguish, usually without any cause or condition. Author Vladmir Nabokov expands by adding “ it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”
(Indonesian) - A joke so poorly told and so unfunny that one cannot help but laugh.
(Inuit) – To go outside to check if anyone is coming.
(Czech) – The closest definition is a state of agony and torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery.
(Japanese) – A mother who relentlessly pushes her children toward academic achievement.
(Scottish) – The act of hesitating while introducing someone because you’ve forgotten their name.
(Czech) – This word means to call a mobile phone and let it ring once so that the other person will call back, saving the first caller money. In Spanish, the phrase for this is “Dar un toque,” or, “To give a touch.
(Brazilian Portuguese) – The act of tenderly running one’s fingers through someone’s hair.
(German) – The fear of diminishing opportunities as one ages – it’s literal translation “gate-closing panic”
(Pascuense Easter Island) – The act of taking objects one desires from the house of a friend by gradually borrowing all of them.
(Japanese) – A way of living that focuses on finding beauty within the imperfections of life and accepting peacefully the natural cycle of growth and decay.
(French) – The feeling that comes from not being in one’s home country.
(Danish) – A feeling of openness, warmth & friendship often between friends.
(French) – “The call of the void” or an urge to leap from high places.
(Arabic) – “You bury me,” a declaration of one’s hope that they’ll die before another person because of how difficult it would be to live without them.
(Spanish) – Originally used to describe a supernatural entity similar to a forest-fairy or sprite, that brought about a feeling of awe & gave one a unique understanding of the beauty of the world. But early in the 20th century, Spanish playwright Federico García Lorca altered its meaning to become the more straightforward “mysterious power of a work of art to deeply move a person.”
(Portuguese) – The feeling of longing for something or someone who you love and which is lost.
(Japanese): To look worse after a haircut
(Japanese): An act someone does for you that you didn’t want to have them do and tried to avoid having them do, but they went ahead anyway, determined to do you a favor, and then things went wrong and caused you a lot of trouble, yet in the end social conventions required you to express gratitude
(German): A face badly in need of a fist
(Japanese): A beautiful girl… as long as she’s being viewed from behind
(Portuguese): “to disentangle” yourself out of a bad situation (To MacGyver it)
(Spanish): a climactic show of spirit in a performance or work of art, which might be fulfilled in flamenco dancing, or bull-fighting, etc.
(Norwegian): The euphoria you experience when you are first falling in love
(pronounced Gheegle; Filipino): The urge to pinch or squeeze something that is unbearably cute
(Mandarin): in traditional Chinese society, you would build up good guanxi by giving gifts to people, taking them to dinner, or doing them a favor, but you can also use up your gianxi by asking for a favor to be repaid
(Tshiluba, Congo): A person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time
(French): usually translated as “staircase wit,” is the act of thinking of a clever comeback when it is too late to deliver it
(Czech): a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery
(Yaghan): A look between two people that suggests an unspoken, shared desire
(Malay): “to pamper”, it describes gooey, childlike and coquettish behavior by women designed to elicit sympathy or pampering by men. “His girlfriend is a damn manja. Hearing her speak can cause diabetes.”
(pronounced may-rah-kee; Greek): Doing something with soul, creativity, or love. It’s when you put something of yourself into what you’re doing
(Korean): the subtle art of listening and gauging another’s mood. In Western culture, nunchi could be described as the concept of emotional intelligence. Knowing what to say or do, or what not to say or do, in a given situation. A socially clumsy person can be described as ‘nunchi eoptta’, meaning “absent of nunchi”
(Mexican Spanish): The embarrassment you feel watching someone else’s humiliation
(Russian): a person who asks a lot of questions
(German): the pleasure derived from someone else’s pain
(Gaelic): The itchiness that overcomes the upper lip just before taking a sip of whisky
(Arabic): implies a happy solution for everyone, or “I win. You win.” It’s a way of reconciling without anyone losing face. Arabic has no word for “compromise,” in the sense of reaching an arrangement via struggle and disagreement
(Japanese): What you pretend to believe and what you actually believe, respectively
(Pascuense language of Easter Island): to borrow objects one by one from a neighbor’s house until there is nothing left
(German): The feeling of being alone in the woods
(Japanese): literally ‘a meal eaten sideways,’ referring to the peculiar stress induced by speaking a foreign language

This post was originally published in two parts by Alex Wain on sobadsogood.com.

You can see the original posts here and here.

What situation do you wish there was a word for in English? 

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