Word.ws English Dictionary

sonder

Syllables: son·derUK/ˈsɒndə/US/ˈsɑndɚ/

sonder noun: the profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing in the street, has a life as complex as one's own, which they are constantly living despite one's personal lack of awareness of it.

Noun

sonder (uncountable)

  1. (neologism) The profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing in the street, has a life as complex as one's own, which they are constantly living despite one's personal lack of awareness of it.
    • I had a sonder, a realization that the random girl sitting next to me inside of Starbucks might have a fantastic life or she might be dealing with a very ill family member.2012 December, John Buysse, “On 2nd thought, we do have linked lives”, in The Daily Illini, volume 142, number 68,5, University of Illinois, page 4A
    • We need to have a "sonder" moment, where we realize that we aren't the only ones with feelings, dreams, regrets and hopes.2013, Annie Cohen, "A Deeper Understanding", Panorama (Ladue Horton Watkins High School, St. Louis, Missouri), Volume 62, Issue 3, 14 October 2013, page 14

Origin of sonder

Coined by American author and neologist John Koenig in 2012, whose project, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, aims to come up with new words for emotions that currently lack names. Inspired by German sonder- (“special”) and French sonder (“to probe”).

Words that rhyme with sonder

Questions about sonder

What does sonder mean?
Sonder means the profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing in the street, has a life as complex as one's own, which they are constantly living despite one's personal lack of awareness of it.
What part of speech is sonder?
Sonder is a noun.
How do you pronounce sonder?
Sonder is pronounced /ˈsɑndɚ/ (US).

Words near sonder in the dictionary

  1. sondage
  2. sondages
  3. sonde
  4. sondeli
  5. sondelis
  6. sonder
  7. Sonderbund
  8. Sonderweg
  9. sondes
  10. sondesh
  11. Sondheim

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sonder (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.

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