The realisation that every stranger has a life as complex as your own — coined in 2012 by a web project and, by 2020, the most-quoted invented word on the internet, on posters, in captions, and in a lot of songs. The record's entry for a neologism that succeeded.
There was a version of Sonder that went round my family group chat about a month late, presented as new. I did not correct anyone. It was, for them, new, and that has to count for something.
The headnote reads like an autopsy. Adding, for balance: at its peak in 2020, Sonder was genuinely useful — it did a job no existing word did, and it did it in under a second.
'Sonder' as a café name in Lisbon, a tattoo on a woman in Bristol and a song title by four different artists. The record notes the word is fourteen years old and has done well for itself.
What does it mean? Write it the way you would say it out loud.
