Meaning & use
sonder
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Meanings
noununcountablerare
The sudden feeling that each stranger you pass is living a life as rich and complicated as your own.
Grammar: Uncountable, so it takes no plural and no 'a': say 'a wave of sonder' or 'feel sonder', not 'a sonder'.
Patterns
- feel sonder
- a moment of sonder
- sonder at something
- sonder washes over someone
Standing on the packed train, she felt a rush of sonder and wondered where each tired face was going.
He described the sonder he felt in the airport queue, imagining the arguments and birthdays behind every passport.
Reading the word for the first time gave me a strange moment of sonder about my own neighbors.
noununcountablerareliterary
The idea or theme that ordinary strangers have inner lives we never see, used as a subject for writing or art.
Grammar: Used as an abstract topic word, often after 'about': writing about sonder, the sonder of city life.
Patterns
- write about sonder
- the sonder of something
- explore sonder in something
Her short film is about sonder: six strangers whose stories almost touch but never meet.
The photographer said sonder was the whole point of the series, since every passerby carried a hidden history.
In class we discussed sonder as a modern word invented to fill a gap in English.
Common combinations
- a moment of sonder
- Looking out of the bus window, he had a quiet moment of sonder about the people on the pavement.
- feel sonder
- You can feel sonder in any crowd once you start imagining other people's lives.
- a wave of sonder
- A wave of sonder hit her as she watched the commuters hurry past.
- the sonder of city life
- His poems are all about the sonder of city life and the stories behind each window.
- be struck by sonder
- I was struck by sonder in the hospital waiting room, surrounded by strangers with their own fears.
- a sense of sonder
- Walking home late, she had a strong sense of sonder about everyone asleep in the flats above the shops.
Synonyms and how they differ
- empathy
- Empathy is sharing or understanding another person's feelings, often someone you know; sonder is only the sudden awareness that strangers have full lives, with no feeling-sharing involved.
- perspective
- Perspective is a broader word for a way of seeing things; sonder names one particular emotional moment, so it is much narrower and far less common.
Opposites
Commonly confused: sonder or sonder? sonder or wonder?
sonder vs sonder
Some learners confuse this invented English word with the German adverb 'sonder', meaning 'special' or 'without', or with French 'sonder', meaning 'to probe'. The English noun has nothing to do with either.
sonder vs wonder
Wonder means curiosity or amazement in general; sonder is a specific realization about other people's hidden lives and is not a synonym for wonder.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'sonder' correctly?
Choose one answer.
'Sonder' is an uncountable noun for the sudden awareness that strangers have full lives of their own, so option 2 fits perfectly. Option 1 is wrong because sonder is not about people you know and love, option 3 uses the French verb 'sonder' (to probe), and option 4 wrongly treats the word as a countable object.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “sonder”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.