the.com/awe
the emotion so big it shrinks your ego and stretches your sense of time.
means A feeling of overwhelming wonder, reverence, or sometimes fear in the face of something vast, beautiful, or powerful.
from From Old English ege, meaning 'terror, dread, awe' — the word once leaned hard toward fear, the kind you'd feel before a wrathful god. It likely came in reinforced by Old Norse agi ('fright'), and traces back to a Proto-Germanic root tied to terror, with possible cousins in Greek akhos ('pain, grief'). Over the centuries the dread softened into reverence, which is why 'awesome' and 'awful' were once near-twins — both meant 'awe-inspiring' before they wandered to opposite ends of the room.
- body tell
- Goosebumps and dropped jaws are awe's signature
- clock bender
- It makes people feel they have more time
- ego shrink
- Brain quiets the self-focused 'default mode' network
- kindness boost
- Awe-struck people share and help more readily
- root word
- From Old Norse for terror and dread
niagara falls — 188 feet of cascading water on the canada-us border that has inspired wonder since european contact in 1600s
grand canyon — 1 mile deep chasm in arizona revealing 2 billion years of geological history
mount everest — 29,032 feet peak in the himalayas that has inspired mountaineers and awe since first summited in 1953