The happiness dictionary
(Book)

Includes index.

"This book aims to introduce readers to a wealth of untranslatable terms relating to happiness, sourced from across the world's languages. As a result, their understanding and even experience of happiness will hopefully be genuinely enriched.Have you ever had a feeling that you couldn't quite describe, because no English word exists for it? Indeed, without such a word, it can make it difficult to remember or understand the feeling, and certainly to talk about it with other people. This applies to all aspects of life, and not least to that most sought-after of feelings, happiness, where our ability to experience and understand it is limited by the words at our disposal. However, all is not lost. Even if English has not created a word for a specific feeling, or indeed any phenomena, another language might have. These are known as 'untranslatable' words, terms which lack an exact equivalent in another language. The beautiful thing is that if we can discover and learn these words, the boundaries of our world will expand accordingly. These words may allow us to give voice to feelings we've already hazily experienced, but have previously lacked the ability to conceptualise. They may even allow us to encounter new feelings that we hadn't previously been aware of or enjoyed" --Publisher description.