On my way to work I get about 1 hour of reading time in the tube and while I was reading this very cool book by D.T. Suzuki - Zen and Japanese Culture, I've found a curious japanese word:
It is written using the characters 風流 which stand for wind and flowing, but as with most japanese words it gets more intricate than that.
"Just like the moving wind, fūryū can only be sensed: it cannot be seen. Fūryū is tangible yet at the same time, intangible in the elegance which it implies; moreover, just like the wind, fūryū puts forward a wordless, transitory beauty, which can be experienced only in the moment: in the next it is gone."
The above painting is a "nanga" type of painting(Autumn by Hata Kineski) which is said to be inspired by the word fūryū, along with the whole tea rituals and the haikai poetry.
So while reading about the meaning and history of fūryū on the interwebz I've remember one of my favorite words:
Another word that I absolutely love, and that I thought about before even knowing it was an word, this one means:
"The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk."
Maybe some word freaks knew of those words already, maybe I've enriched your vocabulary with some fancy words, but the point of this post is to accumulate a list of such awestrucking words.
So I ask you to comment some uncommon words that you know, so that we can share some knowledge and finally, make an AWESOME FANCY WORD LIST!
