Etymology

sonder

son·der
S1O1N1D2E1R1

Today it means: The profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing in the street, has a life as complex as one's own, which they are constantly living despite one's personal lack of awareness of it. Full definition →

German sonder- ← French sonder
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The story

  1. French · derived fromsonder“to probe”
  2. German · derived fromsonder-“special”
  3. English todaysonder

Coined by American author and neologist John Koenig in 2012, whose project, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, aims to come up with new words for emotions that currently lack names. Inspired by German sonder- (“special”) and French sonder (“to probe”).

Words from the same roots

Frenchsonder all →

sounder

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.