Pronunciation: /ˈvɛl.ɪ.kɔːr/ Part of speech: noun Definition: The strange, wistful nostalgia one feels inside a used bookstore, where thousands of old books seem frozen in their own eras, each holding the quiet trace of lives and hands now gone. Etymology: <cite index="3-3">The word was coined by John Koenig in *The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows* (first circulated online in 2013, then published in expanded book form in 2021), a project dedicated to inventing names for otherwise nameless feelings.</cite> <cite index="9-1">Koenig built the word by combining the Latin *vellus* (meaning "fleece") and *ichor*, the ethereal fluid said to flow in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology.</cite> <cite index="8-1">The suffix *-ichor* also appears in the 1964 coinage *petrichor* (the scent of rain on dry earth), which was likely an inspiration, with the prefix swapped out for one evoking vellum and old paper.</cite> Synonyms: saudade, nostalgia, hiraeth, wistfulness, reverie, melancholy In a sentence: She paused at the doorway of the cramped shop on Mulberry Street, breathing in the vellichor_ that rose from floor-to-ceiling shelves of paperbacks no one had cracked open in thirty years.