SAUDADE noun (soh-dah-duh)


noun

1. (in Portuguese folk culture) a deep emotional state of melancholic longing for a person or thing that is absent: the theme of saudade in literature and music.

Quotes

... “The Girl From Ipanema” was a potent distillation of the concept of saudade, a feeling of melancholic nostalgia that characterizes so much Brazilian music. ... Longing for the unattainable, and an acute sense of the moment’s slipping away: That’s saudade.
--*Stephen Holden,*"Brazilian Yearning and Imminent Loss," New York Times, March 21, 2014

Its name comes from the word saudade, which describes the melancholic nostalgia one feels for people, things, pleasures and times now lost.
--*Antonio Tabucchi,*Requiem: A Hallucination, translated by Margaret Jull Costa, 1994


Origin

Portuguese saudade ultimately derives from Latin sōlitāt-, the stem of sōlitās “loneliness, solitude.” (Latin -l- between vowels is lost in Portuguese; Latin -t- between vowels becomes -d- in Portuguese and Spanish.) The original Old Portuguese form soidade was altered to saudade under the influence of the verb saudar “to salute, greet” (from Latin salūtāre “to keep safe, pay one's respects”). Saudade entered English in the 20th century.