Neologisms

Jefferey Euginedes, a writer who's probably better known for The Virgin Suicides - a book made famous by Sofia Coppola's filmic interpretation (accompanied by a fine soundtrack composed and produced by Air) - than for his Pulitzer-winning masterpiece Middlesex, writes, in the voice of Middlesex's protagonist and narrator Calliope:

Emotions, in my experience, aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in “sadness,” “joy,” or “regret.” Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, “the happiness that attends disaster.” Or: “the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy.” I’d like to show how “intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members” connects with “the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.” I’d like to have a word for “the sadness inspired by failing restaurants” as well as for “the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.”

And so I propose that we should come up with better words for expressing more complex emotions. They don't even have to be "Germanic train-car constructions" like Schadenfreude.

Like, for example, "the irresistible urge to 'zerbert' a baby's belly." How's about "Zerbunger"?

And, really, what's the word for “the excitement of getting a room with a minibar"? I'd really like to know. I'd use this word.

And how's about a word to describe "the agony of entertaining unappreciative house-guests," or "the joy of discovering someone has done a household chore you were putting off"?

How's about some help here? I'm suffering from deneologificiency.