ambedo

From albedo, a physics term that describes the proportion of light reflected by a substance (from the Latin term for whiteness). Ambedo refers to the tendency both to reflect and to absorb. Coined by American author and neologist John Koenig in 2012, whose project, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, aims to come up with new words for emotions that currently lack words.

ambedo (uncountable)

1. A kind of melancholic trance in which a person becomes completely absorbed in vivid sensory details.
   • 2014 December 22, Tommy McMahon, Hero of the Day, Author House, →ISBN, page 71:

     Later that day, E.K. was sitting on the concrete porch that was the face of his house, basking in ambedo—he became vividly entranced by the seemingly meaningless things around him.

   • 2021, Nishita Patil, MEET YOURSELF, SpotWrite Publications, page 12:

     The intense, nutty aroma of freshly brewed coffee was still lingering in the air of my modest den. With my back against my hulking bookshelf, I, now in ambedo, watched the rain drip-drop on the window pane. But the pattering of the rain against the glass door of the balcony was so intense and unsettling that for a brief moment, I experienced chrysalism.

   • 2021 February 1, Priyanka Pareek, AMAIRA, Blue Rose Publishers, →ISBN, page 106:

     Ambedo, a melancholic trance.
     Fight of the Elements.
     It was quiet like never before. Kailash was moving towards the north. Oce was quiet, silently helping the movement. All the mountain children back in their ambedo.

   • 2022 January 22, Wayne Kyle Spitzer, Riders on the Storm, Hobb's End Books, page 743:

     Ambedo. That's what he was feeling as he ran after Selena through the tall grass (having awakened with a knot on his head to find her fleeing) and tried not to think about the danger. Ambedo: that trance-like state in which one became became so absorbed by their surroundings—the wind massaging the green hills so that they undulated like sea anemones or the red-gold chiaroscuro sky lending palette and poetry to everything or the sun glaring over the horizon like a burning but indifferent god—that they forgot what they were doing or even why they were there.

• Koenig, John (2021) “ambedo”, in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, New York: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, pages 77–79

From ambi- +‎ edō.

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈam.be.doː/, [ˈämbɛd̪oː]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈam.be.do/, [ˈämbed̪o]

ambedō (present infinitive ambedere, perfect active ambēdī, supine ambēsum); third conjugation

1. to eat or gnaw around; erode
2. (transferred) to waste; consume

• “ambedo”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “ambedo”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• ambedo in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.