Word list · 23 words
Beautiful words
These are words that are beautiful twice over: pleasant to say, and exact about something that usually goes unnamed. Petrichor is the smell of rain on dry ground, susurrus a soft whispering sound, apricity the warmth of the sun in winter.
Beauty in a word is a matter of taste, so this is an editor's choice, not a ranking. We left out words that only sound pretty and mean nothing in particular. Each entry gives the meaning first, then where the word comes from and how rare it really is.
Kept on this device only, for the daily recall in My words.
The words
Petrichor
Petrichor is the earthy, unmistakable smell of rain landing on dry ground — the scent that rises the moment the first drops hit soil after a dry spell.
Science & Nature
Susurrus
A soft whispering, murmuring or rustling sound — wind in leaves, a crowd at low volume.
Rare & Beautiful English
Apricity
Apricity is the warmth of the sun in winter — a word dictionaries still list, marked obsolete, but which almost never appears in actual English writing.
Science & Nature
Mellifluous
Flowing like honey — now almost always of a voice or prose that is smooth and sweet to hear.
Rare & Beautiful English
Evanescent
Lasting only a very short time; fleeting, and already on the edge of imperceptibility — and also a hard technical term in physics and mathematics for a quantity that decays rather than propagates.
Rare & Beautiful English
Gloaming
The gloaming is twilight — chiefly the fading light of early evening, though it can also mean daybreak.
Science & Nature
Alpenglow
Alpenglow is the rosy or cherry-red glow on snow-covered mountains at sunrise or sunset.
Science & Nature
Komorebi
Komorebi is the Japanese word for sunlight filtering through the leaves of trees — the dappled, shifting play of light and shadow that falls beneath a canopy.
Untranslatable & Rare Feelings
Psithurism
Psithurism is the rustling or whispering sound of wind moving through trees.
Science & Nature
Serein
Fine rain or mist falling from an apparently cloudless sky, typically shortly after sunset.
Rare & Beautiful English
Halcyon Days
Halcyon days originally named a specific fourteen-day calm spell around the winter solstice — now, loosely, any remembered period of peace.
Science & Nature
Selcouth
Strange and marvellous because rarely encountered — unfamiliar, wondrous, seldom known.
Rare & Beautiful English
Numinous
Numinous is the feeling of standing in the presence of something holy that is both terrifying and irresistible.
Rare & Beautiful English
Ineffable
Too great, intense or sacred to be put into words — and in the religious sense that hardened in the 1590s, not merely indescribable but forbidden to be spoken.
Rare & Beautiful English
Murmuration
A murmuration is a flock of starlings, especially one performing the dense, shape-shifting aerial displays seen at dusk.
Science & Nature
Moonbow
A moonbow is a rainbow produced by moonlight instead of sunlight, usually appearing ghostly white to the naked eye.
Science & Nature
Eucatastrophe
A eucatastrophe is the sudden joyful turn near the end of a story that snatches a good ending out of apparent defeat.
Rare & Beautiful English
Yūgen
Yūgen is beauty that works by suggestion — grace and depth held back rather than displayed — and in Noh theatre, a craft standard an actor is judged on.
Untranslatable & Rare Feelings
Limn
To depict — originally by painting, now most often in words, with the sense of drawing something out into visibility.
Rare & Beautiful English
Quiddity
Quiddity is the essential whatness of a thing — what makes it that thing and not another.
Rare & Beautiful English