The Book of Human Emotions: From Ambiguphobia to Umpty - 154 Words from Around the World for How We Feel - Tiffany Watt Smith 2016

Nginyiwarrarringu

Certain emotions end up such an important part of how we experience the world that we unpick their subtle variations, christening each one. In the West in the last ten years, we have named many types of anger (see: RAGE). For the Pintupi, whose homeland is the deserts of Western Australia, there are fifteen different kinds of fear. Among them, ngulu is the dread you feel when you believe another person is seeking revenge; kamarrarringu the tense, frozen feeling when you sense someone is creeping up behind you; kanarunvtju a terror about bad spirits visiting in the night, so pervasive that it stops you sleeping; and nginyiwarrarringu is a sudden spasm of alarm that makes people leap to their feet and look about, trying to see what caused it.

See also: FEAR; MEHAMEHA.