sonder
son·der/ˈsɑndɚ/noun
sonder is a noun meaning “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…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled S-O-N-D-E-R and has 2 syllables (son·der), and it appears about once in every 12 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does sonder mean?
noun
- 1
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.
We need to have a "sonder" moment, where we realize that we aren't the only ones with feelings, dreams, regrets and hopes.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce sonder?
- US /ˈsɑndɚ/
- UK /ˈsɒndə/
Sonder has 2 syllables, split son·der in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is sonder?
Sonder appears about once in every 12 million words in written English, the 103,949th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does sonder come from?
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”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).