Grasping for the Right Word

[MrPixel]

My wife and I were enjoying a late lunch at our usual place today, and in idle conversation she asked that one question all husbands dread, "Do these pants make my butt look fat?"

Uh. No. Not that one. Strike that. The other one, "Are you happy?" I was about a third of the way into my fishbowl margarita, so, yeah, I was feeling somewhat mellow and satisfied with the moment. But happy? I told her, "I'm okay with things in general, but I wouldn't call it happy. Not any of the other dwarves, either." After the obligatory smirk, she countered with, "Complacent, maybe?"

Which elicited the wordsmith, and all day I've been pondering the "happy" question. "Complacent" isn't really the right word, it connotes sort of a naïveté, a self-satisfied bliss of uncritical satisfaction. What I guess I was looking for was a word that would be about an 8 on the scale, the scale being 0 for miserable and 10 for happy, where 11 on the dial would be "ecstatic."

Suggestions? And do you have a word gnawing at you that doesn't quite fit a moment you're trying to write?

 

[SimonDoom]

Entertained?

"Content" might not be high enough. That's more of a 5 to 6 word.

If you're eating or drinking, perhaps "sated" or "quenched." Or, with margaritas, "buzzed."

 

[Erozetta]

I'd say an 8 on that scale is probably pleased or satisfied. A 9 might be elated.

 

[Robin_Starveling]

Being human means cycling through a whole spectrum of emotions that replace and even contradict each other from one moment to the next. One moment you’re happy, the next you’re irritated, angry, or just tired of everything. No one’s always happy or always sad (which makes me realize what a nightmare clinical depression must be). Remaining in the same emotional state for hours on end isn’t human; it’s torture.

So when someone throws that annoying “Are you happy?” at me, I simply answer, “I’m healthy.” Everything else is noise and petty self-pity.

BTW, as a human whisperer, I’ve noticed that when people ask “Are you happy?” what they usually mean is, “I am not.”

 

[THBGato]

Is content less than happy? In Spanish "contento" means happy, thus I always think of them as the same level yet, in English, "content" being longer-term, a sort of base-state, while "happy" is more ephemeral, of the moment.

I agree with @Erozetta on pleased and satisfied.

Left-field suggestions: blessed, grateful. Ignoring the religious connotations, to me they have that sense of being 'complacent' without the implied smugness (when used sincerely).

 

[Bamagan]

Cromulent.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Happy about what?

Makes a difference.

 

[PennyThompson]

"And now I want to tell you about my late Uncle Alex. He was my father’s kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well-read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy.

So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.

So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is."

—Kurt Vonnegut, remarks to the women of the graduating class at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia, May 15, 1999

 

[XerXesXu]

Normal.

 

[onehitwanda]

The word likely exists in German. Germans have all the great words.

The closest I can come in English:

"The subdued joy that is made of memories of moments of bliss, mixed in with the shadows of profound disappointments, all blended to a feeling - not happy, because true happiness dies with childhood, but rather that quiet calm contentment that comes from having survived the worst while laughing, sometimes, along the way."

 

[TheLobster]

Glad? Satisfied?

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Calm undamaged.

No negative waves.

 

[sirhugs]

"And now I want to tell you about my late Uncle Alex. He was my father’s kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well-read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy.

So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.

So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is."

—Kurt Vonnegut, remarks to the women of the graduating class at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia, May 15, 1999

god, I miss Kurt Vonnegut.

 

[sirhugs]

god, I miss Kurt Vonnegut.

do you think he was a secret Lit writer?

 

[Nightaelf]

What do you think of “Equanimous”?

It’s one of those words that feels like walking barefoot across cool tiles, calm, self-contained, not cold but quietly untouchable.

In Dutch it translates to "Gelaten"

 

[MelissaBaby]

Entertained?

"Content" might not be high enough. That's more of a 5 to 6 word.

If you're eating or drinking, perhaps "sated" or "quenched." Or, with margaritas, "buzzed."

On a scale where Ecstatic is 11, Sated is 12.

 

[onehitwanda]

On a scale where Ecstatic is 11, Sated is 12.

Where is "overflowing"?

WANDA NO

 

[Cagivagurl]

Comfortable...
In the context of the conversation it might have gone thusly.

"Are you not at least comfortable with your lot?"

 

[NuclearFairy]

Oh God, my roommate asks me that question all the time. At least five times a day. I usually just answer with, "I'm not unhappy." because hearing the question so frequently is pretty irritating.

 

[Comshaw]

On a scale where Ecstatic is 11, Sated is 12.

Oh hell yes!!!



Comshaw

 

[AG31]

Suggestions? And do you have a word gnawing at you that doesn't quite fit a moment you're trying to write?

This kind of question keeps me awake a lot. Sometimes I have to get up and go downstairs and invoke WordHippo.com. That's my suggestion. See what rings a bell.

 

[SimonDoom]

Oh God, my roommate asks me that question all the time. At least five times a day. I usually just answer with, "I'm not unhappy." because hearing the question so frequently is pretty irritating.

The generic phrase "I'm good" serves well in cases like these.

 

[crookedletter]

It's an interesting topic, about that one word in particular. "Happy" has come to be overloaded with meaning: it means an overall sense of satisfaction and contentment with one's life; it means being comfortable with one's decisions; it means being joyful, not merely intermittent joy but some kind of perpetual state of joy.

It seems to me if someone declares themselves "happy" without qualification then they might actually be insane.

It's enough, I think, to try to be comfortable in one's own skin, to accept where one is in life while continuing to seek to improve it. It's enough to try to find some joy (or "happiness") a little bit every day, but not expect its ever-presence.

As a writer, I think "happy" is a bit like "love" -- there's too much nuance to it to make it as evocative as we want it to be. So better to write thousands of words trying to nail down what it is than to slap that single word on the page and call it done.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Spent a moment with my thesaurus and will offer this humble rating...

1 Neutral
2 Slightly content
3 Mildly pleased
4 Content
5 Happy
6 Cheerful
7 Joyful
8 Delighted
9 Thrilled
10 Ecstatic
11 Blissful
12 Euphoric
13 Overflowing(@onehitwanda )

Feel free to rearrange as you will. I'm certainly not THE expert on happy. Still just a novice.

 

[SamanthaBehgs]

Might I recommend looking at this in terms of both the valence of the emotion (how pleasant/unpleasant the experience is) and the arousal level of the emotion (how much of your energy does it take? How activating is it?). These two dimensions actually map to systems in your brain and help to explain the various emotions that you might feel.

This is a VERY detailed image that goes into many emotional words that can be used to describe your current state: https://csdl-images.ieeecomputer.org/trans/ta/2013/01/figures/tta20130101161.gif

And the thing is - your wife could be asking how you're feeling "right now" or she could be asking how you feel "overall" in life. Those are two very different questions, with "right now" feelings changing much more rapidly and readily than our overall feelings about life in general.

There are less detailed images that are less overwhelming to explain the concept as well, but in a forum full of wordsmiths, I thought the more detailed would be appreciated. Here's a less detailed one that I'd be more likely to use if I were teaching someone who wasn't into words about this idea for the first time (or if you don't want to click my links because links on the internet can be risky, just google "Emotional Scale Valence and Arousal" and look at the image results):
https://www.researchgate.net/figure...ive-and-arousal-low-high-Every_fig1_318031044