the.com/ennui
the existential yawn so refined it needed a French passport to be taken seriously.
means A weary, dissatisfied boredom — the listless dullness of someone who finds nothing worth caring about.
from French, from Old French enui ("annoyance, vexation"), which traces back to the Latin phrase mihi in odio est — "it is hateful to me." That same Latin root, in odio, is the unlikely ancestor of the much blunter English word "annoy." So ennui and annoyance are siblings separated at birth: one grew up to slam doors, the other to gaze wistfully out of windows. English borrowed ennui in the 18th century, importing the whole mood along with the spelling.
- root
- From Latin 'inodiare' — to make loathsome.
- not just bored
- Implies weariness with existence itself.
- poet fuel
- Baudelaire blamed it for humanity's worst sins.
- chemistry
- Linked to low dopamine and unstimulated brains.
- upside
- Often precedes bursts of creativity and reinvention.
lost in translation — sofia coppola's 2003 film capturing tokyo alienation and purposelessness
baudelaire's paris — 19th century poet chronicled urban melancholy and world-weariness in les fleurs du mal
camus the stranger — meursault's detached indifference in 1942 novel, unable to feel or care