vellichor
- The strange, melancholy feeling of being in a used-book store, aware that each volume contains a whole world that you will likely never have time to read.
In a sentence
- Wandering the cramped aisles of the secondhand bookshop, she was overcome with vellichor at the sight of so many unread spines.
- He described his feeling in old libraries as vellichor — a bittersweet grief for all the stories he would die not having read.
Usage note. Vellichor is a coined internet word from a creative project, not a word with historical usage; be transparent about its origin if you use it, as many readers will be unfamiliar with it or skeptical of its legitimacy.
Where it comes from
English vellichor · entered English 2013
A neologism invented by John Koenig for his ongoing Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows project, first published online around 2013. The word has no historical linguistic roots in any classical language and is not found in standard dictionaries; its components appear to be freely invented rather than derived from documented etyma.