sonder

[ son-der ]

noun

1. the feeling one has on realizing that every other individual one sees has a life as full and real as one’s own, in which they are the central character and others, including oneself, have secondary or insignificant roles:

   In a state of sonder, each of us is at once a hero, a supporting cast member, and an extra in overlapping stories.

Word History and Origins

Origin of sonder¹

Coined in 2012 by U.S. writer John Koenig in his blog The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows; perhaps partly based on French sonder “to probe, plumb,” of unclear origin, apparently either akin to sound ³( def ), sound ⁴( def ) or from Vulgar Latin subundāre (unrecorded) “to dive, plunge” (ultimately from sub sub- ( def ) + unda “wave”); perhaps partly based on German sonder- “separate, special” ( sundry ( def ) )

Example Sentences

Meanwhile Brian Sonder Anderson, who runs the Blue Angel cinema and is head of the local trader’s association, points out that supermarkets and bakeries are booming locally as factory workers flock to them on their lunch breaks.

From BBC

“We also have population centers over a large part of the northeast,” said Leslie Sonder, a geophysicist at Dartmouth College, “So a lot of people around here feel the earthquake.”

From Seattle Times

Scott Blakeslee, the L.A.-area manager for the upscale Sonder hotel brand, says the majority of bookings for the Sonder Lüm hotel, which opened in 2021 in anticipation of SoFi’s crowds, happened three months ago.

From Los Angeles Times

A couple of weeks before the end of the war, five German soldiers buried the treasure, but another, Helmut Sonder, watched them while lying in the bushes with a war injury.

From New York Times

It is possible that Mr. Sonder made the whole thing up, but Dutch officials in charge of the search thought this was unlikely, documents indicate.

From New York Times