Saudade is a Portuguese word (also widely used in Brazilian Portuguese and Galician) that has no direct, perfect translation in English, but it’s one of the most famous “untranslatable” words in the world.
Core meaning:
A deep, melancholic longing or nostalgia for something (or someone) that is absent — often with the awareness that it may never return.
It combines elements of:
• Nostalgia
• Longing/missing
• Bittersweet tenderness
• Love mixed with sadness
• A sense of incompleteness
Key characteristics that make saudade unique:
• It’s not just missing something in the past; you can feel saudade for things that never happened, places you’ve never been, people you’ve never met, or even a future that feels out of reach.
• There’s often a pleasurable or poetic quality to the pain — the sadness itself feels beautiful or meaningful.
• It’s deeply tied to Portuguese and Brazilian cultural identity (especially in fado music, poetry, and literature).
Examples in context:
• Listening to an old song and suddenly feeling saudade for your childhood summers.
• Looking at the ocean and feeling saudade for someone you love who lives far away.
• Missing a version of yourself that no longer exists.
• Feeling saudade for a home you can never fully return to (common among immigrants).
Famous descriptions:
• “Saudade is the love that remains” after someone or something is gone.
• “The presence of absence.”
• A Brazilian writer once said: “Saudade is when the heart says ‘I still remember’ even when the mind says ‘let it go.’”
Saudade is that warm, aching feeling in your chest when you miss something or someone so deeply that the missing itself becomes a kind of presence. It hurts, but in a way that feels profoundly human and even beautiful.