No Equivalent

Harmas

"The potential definitions, actually, are several, and just conflicting enough that the word, it seems, isn’t totally translatable from the Provençal. It could be wasteland, yes, but it could also be fallow land, or uncultivated land. It could be abandoned land; looking back further and connecting the word to its Latin root—eremus—it could even mean something more like solitude."

Harmas

Haya'a

“Haya'a means the aliveness of the soul. My teenage self was partly right in her rejection of haya’a. True haya’a comes from within. It can not be externally enforced, no matter how many lectures a person receives, how many compliant nods they give. It isn’t quite shame, nor is it guilt. Instead, it exists within a person, and prevents them from breaking their integrity. It transcends fickle human whims and approval-seeking.”

Haya'a

Crusher Run

Even where the term is used—in central and northern New York—it is not really ‘crusher run.’ It’s ‘crush-and-run,’ but nobody says that. It is a mix of fine gravel and stone dust. I can’t find the etymology of the term, but my guess is that the stone dust, which has been pulverized by heavy machinery during the mining and manufacturing process, is the crush, and the gravel is the run—or vice versa. One is crush, the other is run.”

Crusher Run

Natsukashii

“Where nostalgia expresses a longing to return to time or place when things were good, it is tinged with melancholy, even sadness and anxiety. Natsukashii, on the other hand, is absent this gloominess and suggests something slightly different: a happiness to be remembering a happy memory.”

Natsukashii

Faq

“I listened to the word dozens of times during a single broadcast, sometimes succumbing to giggles. Such is the mental exhaustion caused by straining to learn a language with no classes and little written material. Or, the emotional exhaustion of trying to faq out a life as an alien in a new land.”

Faq