20 inspiring words about nature to reconnect with it

According to the English writer Robert Macfarlane, Hundreds of words about the air, the plants, the earth and its landscapes live forgotten. The new dictionaries eliminate terms on nature to replace them with technological terms, an act that further separates us from the environment. For this simple reason, Macfarlane rescues inspiring words about nature so that we can shape reality, to reconnect.

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Describing the essence of nature is key to being able to relate to it. It is from language that we structure reality, we name things. But it is not just about providing names or transferring ideas, words about nature work as a philosophy that helps us understand what the whole is built.

In this sense, we can translate the natural world as we best appreciate it. Create a dictionary of nature that describes the world for us, that helps us imagine what we once saw, that helps us to reconnect.

The virtual language that distances us from nature

Why have we stopped talking about nature? Technology is a good explanation, it is not necessarily the culprit, but the cause of our break with the environment. We live tied to a screen, learning virtual language in order to be part of something, to understand it and experience it. Can we do the same with nature?

“Language not only records experience, it produces it” – Robert Macfarlane

If words like “dandelion” or “heron” are removed from the dictionary to include “chat room” or “voicemail”, then we are limiting the experiences we can have with nature.

For example, the word “petricor” defines an experience. When the rain falls, it releases a very particular smell, something that makes us connect, that makes us experience it from other senses. We not only observe the rain, we feel it, we smell it, we connect it with emotions.

Likewise, Australian environmental philosopher, Glenn Albrecht, coined the term «solastalgia» to describe the anguish or pain caused by the loss of territory. Now, if we allow the words about nature to be forgotten, then we will be unable to record what we are destroying, both environmental awareness and nature.

In the sense of rescuing what we experience from nature, let’s name different scenarios. For now we only know their words in English, but we could grant new terms in Spanish. Let’s experience the environment through language with these…

20 words about nature

  • A’ Ghnúig: steep slope
  • Adnasjur: Big waves that come after a succession of smaller waves
  • Blinter: A dazzling cold
  • Boobles: Short, choppy waves caused by the wind
  • Caitein: First slight sound of water after a calm
  • Dringey: Light rain still failing to soak
  • Éit: Placing quartz stones in moorland streams to make them sparkle in the moonlight
  • Feetings: Creature footprints as they appear in the snow
  • Flinchin: Misleading promise of better weather, used by meteorologists
  • Glassel: A seaside pebble that glistened when wet, then turned into a dull rock
  • Hot-spong: The sudden power of heat felt when the sun rises from under a cloud
  • Kimmeridge: The light breeze that blows across your skin when you’re sunbathing
  • Lunkie: A hole deliberately left in a wall for an animal to pass through.
  • Skiddle: Throw flat stones so that they skim the surface of the water
  • Slogger: Sucking sound produced by waves against the side of a ship
  • Squatted: Splashed with water or mud by a passing vehicle
  • Stravaig: Wandering aimlessly, without guidance, either by destination or result
  • Summer Geese: Steam rising from the moor when rain is followed by hot sun
  • Terra nullius: Place of nothingness, uninhabitable land
  • Ungive: Thaw
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