10 made-up words to describe emotions that we should all start using immediately

A writer has invented his own dictionary to fill a gap in the English lexicon for emotions and feelings that currently have no definition.

John Koenig, who describes himself as a "freelance creative serf", has compiled his list of new words over at The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.

Many of the words define feelings that a lot of us probably experience every day, others less frequently, yet which most would struggle to describe.

Here are 10 of the best:

1. Opia

n. the ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable.

2. Silience

n. the kind of unnoticed excellence that carries on around you every day, unremarkably—the hidden talents of friends and coworkers, the fleeting solos of subway buskers, the slapdash eloquence of anonymous users, the unseen portfolios of aspiring artists.

3. Nighthawk

n. a recurring thought that only seems to strike you late at night.

4. Scabulous

adj. proud of a scar on your body.

5. La cuna

n. a twinge of sadness that there’s no frontier left, that as the last explorer trudged with his armies toward a blank spot on the map, he didn’t suddenly... turn for home, leaving a new continent unexplored so we could set its mists and mountains aside as a strategic reserve of mystery.

6. Funkenzwangsvorstellung

n. the instinctive trance of a campfire in the dark, spending hours roasting and watching as it settles and sinks into the ground.

7. Waldosia

n. [Brit. wallesia] a condition characterized by scanning faces in a crowd looking for a specific person who would have no reason to be there.

8. Flashover

n. the moment a conversation becomes real and alive, which occurs when a spark of trust shorts out the delicate circuits you keep insulated under layers of irony.

9. Trumspringa

n. the temptation to step off your career track and become a shepherd in the mountains, following your flock between pastures with a sheepdog and a rifle, watching storms at dusk from the doorway of a small cabin, just the kind of hypnotic diversion that allows your thoughts to make a break for it and wander back to their cubicles in the city.

10. Sonder

n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own — populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness — an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

More: Ten old words we need to start re-using immediately