Fleeting moments, sublime memories, complex feelings: there are some concepts that are felt deeply but simply defy capture in words.

Yet some languages have managed to coin words for these concepts that are otherwise hard to describe. For instance, what exactly do you call it when you feel strange and disoriented in a foreign country as you experience new things? It’s not quite homesickness. Perhaps try the French word dedicated to this emotion: dépaysement, which translates literally to un-countrying but conveys much more about the joy, weirdness, novelty, daze and almost fantastical nature of being a traveler in a new land.

Here are some more delightfully untranslatable words from the French language: