Word.ws English Dictionary

saudade

/saʊˈdɑːdə/

saudade noun: a feeling of melancholy and wistful yearning for something that is absent, impossible or lost.

Noun

saudade (uncountable)

  1. A feeling of melancholy and wistful yearning for something that is absent, impossible or lost.
    • I have the feeling, from using the word as a first language speaker, that saudade conveys a bit more feeling, a bit more sorrow, a bit more longing than “I miss you”.2019 January 30, Naty, “Dear gringos, the Portuguese word “Saudade” doesn’t mean what you make it sound like”, in Naty's Bookshelf, archived from the original on 11 Apr 2021

Origin of saudade

Borrowed from Portuguese saudade.

Questions about saudade

What does saudade mean?
Saudade means a feeling of melancholy and wistful yearning for something that is absent, impossible or lost.
What part of speech is saudade?
Saudade is a noun.
How do you pronounce saudade?
Saudade is pronounced /saʊˈdɑːdə/.

Words near saudade in the dictionary

  1. sauconite
  2. saucrosmylid
  3. saucrosmylids
  4. saucy
  5. Saud
  6. saudade
  7. saudagar
  8. saudagars
  9. Saudek
  10. sauder
  11. Sauders

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: saudade (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “saudade.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/saudade. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.