Wordy Wonders: Sonder

Sonder: (n) The realisation that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.

Sonder: (n) The realisation that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.

I feel I need to start this with the fact that the definition above is, as brilliant as it is, completely made up. John Koenig from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows coined the word in 2012, and it has been doing the rounds on the Internet ever since. But then, all words have to start somewhere. Some move into every day language and others disappear, destined to end up on obscure word lists.

The word is related in part to the French word sonder, which means “to probe” and has some links to the german prefix, meaning special. Life is special and there are stories to tell. Perhaps, anyway.

It’s sometimes hard to imagine, especially if, like me, you’ve spent way too long in games interacting with NPCs. The Purpose of the people you meet is to interact with you or give you a quest, then disappear when you turn your back. It’s how people’s mind thinks when we get angry and take it out on a customer service person at the end of a phone. Or troll someone on the Internet. Or send abuse to a celebrity. It’s all too difficult to remember that they too have lives. Lives that are always affected in some way by the words that go into their ears.

It’s the same with history too. Every person who ever existed is another story to tell. King Henry VII, with his decapitating ways and his mood swings was a real person. With a life just as vivid and complex as the one that you have. Every one of the 1000 people that he had serving on him had their own story to tell. Every person from the 57000 people he executed during his reign was a human being. Each person who’s town was destroyed by Attila the Hun. Every person at the Battle of Hastings. At the moment that horrible thought occurs to you: That’s your sonder moment.