Saudades

"Saudades" is a Portuguese word that is deeper than the word "to miss" something. It is a desire, longing, yearning feeling that you can't really put into words. You can be perfectly happy, but still have saudades. It is a bittersweet hopefulness for something you have no control over.

I think most people have felt saudades for something, someone, or someplace. As a missionary, I lived and loved so many people in another place that I will never truely feel complete again: because I can only live and be in one place at a time. In Brazil, I missed my family. In Indiana, I missed so many people, things, and places in Brazil. I can be totally happy and content, but there is a wiggle in my heart that says “But you are missing something. You know there is more out there that you don’t have here.”

Over the years, my little obsession with Saudades has let me to look for words in other languages that have tried to capture this feeling. Here are 13 more:

1. Hiraeth (Welsh): a mix of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness, and the earnest desire for the Wales of the past.

2. Toska (Russian): a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause, or at least a dull ache of the soul.

3. Litost (Czech): a state of agony and torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery.

4. Sevda (Turkish) pain and longing for a loved one.

5. Depaysement (French) a feeling that comes from not being in one’s home country.6. Extranar (Spanish): a missing part of oneself, which can never be completely filled.

7. Mall (Albanian): a feeling of passionate longing, sadness, and at the same time an undefined laughter from the same source.

8. Sehnsucht (German): a quasi mystical word that melds ardent inner longing/yearning with obsession/addition and deep, driven, inconsolable longing for something.

9. Koprnenje (Slovenian) embracing the fatalistic undertones of longing/desire.

10. Kaiho (Finnish): a state of involuntary solitude where one feels incompleteness and yearns for something unattainable.

11. Keurium (Korean): reflects a yearning for anything that has left a deep impression in the heart.

12. Natsukashii (Japanese): a longing for the past. It connotes both happiness for the fondness of that memory and goodness of that time, as well as sadness that it is no longer.

13. Epipotheó (Greek): to yearn affectionately, to long for, strain after, desire greatly.

Three Resources that helped me: Wikipedia (sorry not sorry), Matador Network, and Bible Hub.