Comparle

Turkish25 Oct 2026feelings

hüzün

hew-ZEWN[hyˈzyn]

Pronunciation: Speaker: Veravi95 · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons

the shared, low-grade sorrow a city carries about with it

Closest in English: melancholy, gloom, wistfulness. None of them covers it.

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The story

Turkish borrowed huzn from Arabic, where it is plain sadness, and gave it a postcode. Orhan Pamuk built his book on Istanbul around hüzün: the low light and the ruined villas, a mood the whole city holds at once. English keeps its blues personal.

How it went in the game

Contains the answers. If you want to play the word yourself first, leave this closed.

  1. Which language is it from?Turkish
  2. What is its opposite?neşe (cheerfulness)
  3. Where would you hear it?A ferry across the Bosphorus in the rain
  4. What does it mean?A low mood a whole city shares

How it went

Harder than most words so far.

Round one, language, was where most points went.

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