janeologism (n.): an invented word for complex emotions and experiences that don’t yet have names. Inspired by The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows and shaped mostly by experiences from runs, trails and mountains—often the ones described in my essays—they aim to capture what language has overlooked.
The word janeologism is, naturally, a janeologism, an eponym derived from the author's name.
A
ami-ami (n.): an unintentionally created network of friends that spans nations, cultures, generations, and backgrounds. It makes you feel that the world is smaller, and you no longer belong to any particular nation, culture, generation, or background.
(from Latin “amicus” (friend) and Japanese “ami” (network))
antecebo (n.): the heightened state of anticipation and subtle excitement experienced before the effects of a mind-altering substance could possibly take hold. This sensation highlights the muted nature of ordinary perception and demonstrates the power of the mind’s expectations in shaping experience.
(from Latin ante (before) and placebo (I will please), linking the concepts of anticipation and expectation)
amorpheia (n.): a state of mild, masochistically pleasant insomnia caused by an intense crush
(from the Greek god of sleep and dreams Morpheus with the Greek prefix “ἀ-” (a-) to express negation or absence; also from Latin amor (love))
B
bedbeth (n.) (or bathbeth) a cocoon of warmth—whether under blankets or in bathwater—where the world feels paused and permission is granted to remain soft, still, and sheltered. It carries echoes of a childhood home one never wanted to leave, a sanctuary moment nestled between nostalgia and refusal to reenter the world.
(from English bed (or bath) and Hebrew beth (בֵּית), meaning “house”)
D
dilemmantra (n.): a dilemma that loops in the mind, recurring in moments of reflection. It carries the weight of choice without resolution, turning familiar questions—to stay or to leave, to have or to be, to settle down or to wander—into incantations that echo through one’s life.
(from English dilemma and Sanskrit mantra, linking the idea of irresolvable choice with the repetitive cadence of a chant)
E
echolapse (v.) to repeat a behavioral pattern that you know will lead to a disaster, yet something deep inside still makes you do it.
(a portmanteau of echo and collapse)
emelic (n.): an object—be it a work of art or something entirely mundane—that triggers a sudden and involuntary immersion in the emotional atmosphere of the past. Not merely a recollection, but a vivid return to a former state of being, as if an earlier self briefly reappeared and clashed with the present.
eremission (n.): a blend of quiet relief and elation felt when solitude is broken by the presence of another soul—like encountering a fellow wanderer on a remote trail.
(from Greek eremos – solitude, and Latin remissio – release, relief)
G
guarden (n.) a deeply personal, guarded sanctuary composed of symbols, memories, and meanings that hold deep significance to an individual. This quasi-sacred space often serves as a source of beauty, purpose, and emotional grounding in their life.
(a portmanteau of English “guard” and “garden,” which share a common etymological root.)
H
highku (n.) a piece of thought, perception, or a general feeling that has a beautiful yet kind of delirious quality even though you are completely sober
(from high and Japanese haiku, a form of short poem)
humbeldt (adj.) the feeling of being simultaneously humbled, awed, and slightly disoriented when you read the life story of a great historical figure and realize you could never fit even a fraction of their achievements into your own lifetime.
(from the name of Alexander von Humboldt, renowned explorer and polymath)
humwelt (n.) the subtle, ever-present background hum that forms the acoustic landscape of familiar places in our lives—a tapestry of neighbors’ car engines, the running of bath water, an officemate’s typing cadence, someone’s familiar footsteps, and other ordinary sounds we barely notice yet deeply internalize.
(from English “hum” and German “Umwelt,” meaning “environment” or “surrounding world”)
hye (n.) a moment of awareness that a certain greeting—whether spoken or metaphorical—is also a farewell. It can describe the explicit “hi” exchanged with someone it is likely you are seeing for the last time, or the metaphorical salutation offered to a place, experience, or moment that is slipping away.
(a portmanteau of English “hi” and “bye.”)
L
leifmotif (n.) a conversational habit or opinion you’ve carried through life, often used as a go-to in social contexts to break the ice or fill silence. Like a typo in a word you once misheard, it persists out of familiarity, even if you no longer fully believe in it or remember its origin.
(from “leitmotif” (a recurring theme), with an intentional typo to link it to “life” and its recurring narratives)
loscuro (n.) a realization that even though you have a vision for your future, all the contingencies and uncertainties make it completely opaque.
(from Polish los (fate) and Spanish oscuro (dark)
N
nino (n). : a sense that the child you once were extends seamlessly into who you are now, in a single, unbroken thread—when in truth that “child” is a set of discrete, disjointed memories and self-authored narratives the present self continually rewrites to justify its own existence. A child-self as fiction—an ever-updated character mistaken for something real.
(from Spanish niño— child; and Nino, a diminutive of Italian Giovanni—which in Polish corresponds to Jan—anchoring the word in the author’s own self-mythology.)
O
opak (n.): a state in which uncertainty has been carefully domesticated—where we seek the feeling of not knowing while quietly ensuring that outcomes stay safe, reversible, and comfortably mapped out. An upside-down opacity of modernity, in which we ban “spoilers” yet rely on ratings, reviews, and navigation to pre-clear nearly every risk and uncertainty.
(from Polish na opak meaning awry/upside-down, and English opaque)
P
peripatetic comparativism (n.): an invented discipline that examines parallels between places, moments, and states of mind encountered across latitudes and longitudes. A search for different-yet-similar dynamics, and a habit of filing them into the same private atlas.
(from Greek peripatein, “to walk around,” and Latin comparativus, “concerned with comparison”)
proseac (n.) the daily routine that makes you neither happy nor unhappy, making you bascially numb in the long run.
(from Prozac, an antidepressant, and prose as something dull)
R
rune (n.) an incantation composed while running. A compressed verbal etching that captures fleeting moments, landscapes, and encounters. Most runes follow a 5-7-5 haiku structure, used less as a poetic tradition and more as a form of constraint and discipline.
(from runes: early Germanic alphabets, often believed to carry hidden meanings or magic, and run: a mode of human locomotion)
S
samsahra (n.) the oscillation between seeking the presence of others and the longing to remain alone. The ceaseless tide pulling between solitude and connection, mirroring the cycles of desire, movement, and restlessness captured by the idea of samsara.
(from Polish sam (“alone”), Levantine Arabic sahra (سهرة, “evening gathering”), and Sanskrit samsara (“the endless cycle of longing and becoming”))
shroudinger (n.) the frustratingly intriguing opaqueness of other people, which makes you assume that particular thoughts, intentions, feelings, etc., are both present and absent within them at the same time.
(from English shroud and Schrödinger’s cat being dead and alive simultaneously until the box is opened.)
T
twinsomnium (n.): the subtle, unspoken camaraderie that arises when two people—usually not close to one another—discover a shared quirk, a small deviation from the ordinary. It might be a shared strange dream, a shoulder that always sits slightly lower, an inherited aversion to cilantro, or a faint scar in the same place. Whatever its form, the shared peculiarity becomes a quiet bond, felt more than spoken.
(from English “twin” and Latin somnium, meaning “dream”)
tyleph (n.) (pronounced: tuh-leph) the awareness of the disproportion between the richness of reality and the narrow aperture of human perception—its limited capacity, bound by time, space, lifespan, and by the mind’s own constraints. A realization that there is so much to see, to feel, to understand—and yet only a fraction can ever be witnessed or grasped.
(from Polish tyle (“so much” or “only that”, depending on context) and Aleph—the point in Borges’ story from which all places in the world can be seen, simultaneously and without confusion.)
X
xenopia (n.): the fleeting, uncanny connection formed by locking eyes with a stranger—often through a car window, on a crowded train, in the gym—where the almost palpable awareness of the other acts as a mirror, momentarily heightening one’s self-awareness before both individuals fade back into anonymity.
(from Greek xénos (stranger) and –opia (related to sight)
Z
zgonego (n.): the true disappearance of the self in a flow-like state — not just immersion, but an ego-death so complete that any realization comes only afterward. Unlike ordinary flow, in zgonego there is no “I feel good” or “I am in the zone,” because even a flicker of “I” would mean the ego still lurks nearby. Only when the task is done does memory return, vivid but slightly alien, as if it happened to no one at all.
(from Polish zgon (“death”) and English gone + ego)
zielzeal (n): an intense focus on a particular goal that makes you feel unstoppable
(from German ziel (goal) and English zeal (enthusiasm)
Third Woods 