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Words with a story behind them

Some words carry their history on their back: a man thrown out of a window, a song lyric misheard for a century, a knight who fought windmills. Knowing the story is how the word stays.

1. defenestration nounThrowing someone out of a window. Also, jokingly, throwing someone out of a job.
2. mondegreen nounA misheard lyric or phrase that makes its own sense.
3. quixotic adjectiveChasing an ideal that is noble but hopelessly unrealistic.
4. petrichor nounThe earthy smell that rises when rain falls on dry ground.
5. sonder nounThe realization that every stranger has a life as full and complicated as your own.
6. limerence nounThe obsessive, early stage of being in love, when you cannot stop thinking about someone.
7. halcyon adjectiveCalm, happy, and remembered as golden; usually said of a time in the past.
8. kismet nounFate; what was always going to happen.
9. serendipity nounFinding something good by chance, when you were not looking for it.
10. tsundoku nounBuying books and letting them pile up unread.
11. schadenfreude nounPleasure at someone else’s misfortune.
12. sprezzatura nounMaking something difficult look effortless.
13. hygge nounA feeling of cozy contentment: warmth, good company, nothing to do.
14. hiraeth nounA deep longing for a home you cannot go back to, or that never quite existed.
15. panacea nounA cure for everything; usually said of something that is not.
16. zenith nounThe highest point; the top of someone’s success or of the sun’s path.
17. nadir nounThe lowest point.
18. sanguine adjectiveCheerfully hopeful, even when things look bad.
19. mercurial adjectiveChanging mood quickly and unpredictably.
20. anachronism nounSomething that belongs to a different time than the one it is in.

Every word here is explained six ways on its own page, the way Gloss explains any word in the app: Plain, ADHD, Gen Z, Metaphor, Formal, or Like I’m 5. For iPhone, free for three days.

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