The Vocabulary of Vulnerability: 10 Words from Around the World for Complex and Difficult Emotions

Language is the chalice we lift to our lips to taste our own experience — a vessel that constrains what it contains by giving it its own shape. The more complex our experience, the more muddled the emotions that comprise it, the more it spills outside what language can hold. And yet we live in language — narrative is the neurocognitive pillar of personhood and emotions are how the brain interprets