HIRAETH (hir, iTH)

*Welsh word with no direct English translation - or celtic word native to Wales

~the untranslatable word that connects Wales

word defined:

-It captures a deep, bittersweet feeling of longing and nostalgia that goes beyond simply missing a place or a person

-Grief and sadness felt missing something irretrievably lost

-A unique blend of place, time and people that can never be recreated

-Boils down to an awareness of the presence of absence - kindling a feeling in which pain and joy are braided too tightly to untangle

-Homesick for a place you cannot return to or quite possibly one that never existed

Hiraeth gives a name to that sense of incompleteness you feel when you're acutely aware of something missing in your life

Hiraeth is a Cymraeg (celtic/welsh language spoken in Wales) word which doesn't translate well into English. It is pronounced with two syllables - the first like English here except the r is stronger - the second syllable is like how a mathematician would pronounce i-th as in the ith row of a matrix. (Davis, Texas A&M)