Chrysalism

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

  1. A state of calm and peace experienced during a rainstorm while indoors
  2. The feeling of tranquility and comfort that comes from being sheltered from a storm, especially rain
  3. An emotional state marked by serenity achieved when observing rain from a safe, cozy environment

Etymology: On 22 April 2012, a writer named John Koenig posted a new word on Tumblr for a feeling nobody had bothered to name: the deep calm of being indoors while a thunderstorm rages outside. He called it chrysalism, and within a few years it had spread so far that many people assumed it was an old word. It is not. Koenig was building The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, a project in which he openly invents words for emotions that English leaves unnamed, from the passing sadness of a crowded street to the ache of an ordinary afternoon. His most famous coinage, "sonder," followed the same path from his website to tattoos and lists of "beautiful forgotten words." Those lists rarely mention the author or the date, which is how a twenty-first-century invention came to pass for a rare antique. The word found its way into print when Simon & Schuster published the dictionary as a book in 2021, where it appears on page 5. The image behind it is easy to see. Koenig took "chrysalis," the hard case in which a caterpillar becomes a butterfly or moth, and added "-ism." Listening to rain hammer the roof while you stay dry and warm is a kind of sheltered suspension, wrapped and waiting while the world rearranges itself outside. "Chrysalis" carries its own buried detail. English borrowed it in the seventeenth century from Latin "chrysallis," which came from Greek "khrysallis," built on "khrysos," meaning gold. The Greeks named the pupa for the metallic gold that glints on some species, the same gold spots you can still find on a monarch's pale green case. So a word for sitting quietly through a storm is built, at bottom, on an ancient observation about a shining insect.

Synonyms: tranquility, peacefulness, calmness, serenity, quietude

Antonyms: noise, chaos, commotion, uproar, tumult