Howard Rheingold's 1988 book They Have a Word for It is subtitled "A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words and Phrases". It's fun, albeit a bit dated in tone, not dense in information, and erratic in quality. Some of the better words are widely known already; others are deservedly forgotten. Here a few examples that may lie somewhere in between:

• gemütlich (German) — cozy, comfortable, genial, homey
• Zeitgeist (German, "spirit of the time") — the prevailing mood of a certain period
• saper vivere (Italian, "to know how to live") – to know how to handle people diplomatically
• confianza (Spanish) — unshakable, firm belief in someone
• esprit de l'escalier (French, "the spirit of the staircase") or Treppenwitz (German, "staircase wit") — clever remark that comes to mind when it is too late to utter it
• mantra (Sanskrit) — word or syllable uttered to oneself in order to achieve a state of mind; a linguistic mind-tool
• Torschlüsspanik (German, "door-shutting panic") — fear of being left out
• Drachenfutter (German, "dragon fodder") — a peace offering, a gift given out of guilt for having too much fun
• wabi (Japanese) — a flawed detail that creates an elegant whole
• sabi (Japanese) — beautiful patina
• aware (Japanese) — feelings engendered by ephemeral beauty
• shibui (Japanese) — beauty of aging
• bricoleur (French) — a person who constructs things by random messing around without following an explicit plan
• ponte (Italian) — an extra day off, taken to add a weekend to a national holiday
• lagniappe (French) — an unexpected gift to a stranger or customer
• Gedankenexperiment (German) — thought-experiment
• Weltschmertz (German, "world grief") — a gloomy, romanticized, world-weary sadness
• Schadenfreude (German) — joy that one feels as a result of someone else's misfortune
• mu (Japanese) — a Zen term for No-thing or no-mind
• tao or dao (Chinese) — the Way
• tikkun olam (Hebrew) — spiritual and political reformation of the world
• Gestalten (German) — little wholes that make up larger wholes
• Zwischenraum (German) — the space between things

Many of Rheingold's words are ostentatiously obscure, arcane, or of questionable utility. May they rest in piece, along with their forgotten siblings!

_{(cf Weekend Bridge (2014-04-16), ...) - ^z - 2023-09-06}