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Comment by 8fGTBjZxBcHq | Hacker News Reader

I have never ever heard this word used spoken, or read it organically in a published work. I have only ever seen it on reddit, and now here.

Which doesn't mean it's invalid or not a "real" word or whatever. But I'm a descriptivist and there doesn't seem to be much real use of this one to describe.

I have no idea where it came from and I think it's kind of fascinating. I've been seeing it for almost 20 years online, but it's almost like a few people just like it and want it to catch on.

I think at this point it's at the "stop trying to make sonder happen" stage.

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The linked article is literally where it came from — The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows project coined it and some other words in an effort to describe an emotional state that was in need of a name.

(It’s ~8 years old at this point, just for the record.)

Sorry I didn't mean "I don't know where this word came from" because that's a straightforward and in this case uninteresting problem.

I meant I don't know where the apparent widespread online interest in making this word mainstream came from. Not a lot of _individual words_ have a lobbying team but this one seems to.

>The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows project coined it

I highly doubt that, I recall seeing references to it on myspace a while ago.

Indeed. This website has been pushing this word for almost 10 years (since 2012, along with others, but sonder seems to be their biggest "hit"), seemingly just for the sake of coining a neologism.

But I too have never actually seen it used in the wild as a word, and now it's become a short-term rental startup (https://www.sonder.com/) and a support network (https://www.sondersafe.com/) -- though the second actually does seem to relate to the word. The first probably just used it because it sounds like slumber + wander or something.

The goal of the website is to coin words for specific emotions. Maybe they should focus on writing content that requires them and get that published first. Demonstrating a need and all that...

'sonder' means 'without' in Afrikaans. In Dutch, the same word is spelled zonder. A common word you'd use at least a few times a day.

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