Hi all, As the title suggests, I'm looking for a word to describe this feeling, and I feel that other words I came up with just don't do the trick quite well enough. It's that depressing feeling that sometimes lingers on after you had a very bad and unsettling dream. When the dream might fade, I am sometimes left with this feeling that drags on as the day goes on. I came up with unease, but that's a bit to vague for me. Sorrow and depression don't do it as well. It's something different. It certainly is a depressing feeling, but I can't quite describe this in one word. Any suggestions?
Angst? Melancholy? I mean, what does it feel like? It's probably best to describe the feeling and the thoughts lingering from the dream. You don't particularly need a single word so something like;"bitter sadness as he remembered the way she had looked at him then" is probably better.
Hmm. I don't know if there's a single word to describe that feeling (or rather where it comes from), although you have certainly conjured up the idea. The closest I can come up with at the moment is 'despondency' - but that doesn't include the idea of it coming from a dream.
You could just say "he felt deeply unsettled. There was something so... wrong about the dream. The thoughts it stirred in him..." Something like that.
I know the feeling you're talking about and I'm not sure I could ever express it in one word. Yes, it's partly angst and partly depression, but mostly it's ambivalence—and that word hardly brings to mind the cacophony of emotions involved. Dreams have made me feel disconnected from the world, left a longing to be back inside the dream... in fact, I think longing is the prevalent feeling that sits at the heart of this maelstrom of melancholy, a longing for that feeling of 'home' inherent in the dream.
For me, that is a funk. The horrid dream of cats on fire in a trash bin left me in a funk long after the particulars had faded from memory.
Yeah, I like 'funk' although it might not be a word that works in all styles of writing because it's borderline slang. But it comes pretty close to the feeling. I have had dreams that did affect my mood during the day. Sometimes for the good, sometimes not. Especially if the dream is 'real,' in the sense that it touches on a real issue, or brings back a real person who is missing from my present life, but whom I loved, disliked, feared, or admired. These dreams can be very powerful, in that they are all emotion and not logic. Therefore you feel their effects, and can't logically will them away by saying 'It's just a dream.' So they haunt you a bit. Haunt may be another word to consider.
Gloom? Misery? Mire? "Bogged down"? Disturbed? Troubled? Unnerved? Horrified? Agitated? Disquieted? Despondent? Desolate? Anguished? Pained? Racked? Torment? Tortured? Mournful? Somber? Dejected? Dismay? Doleful?
Yes. Haunt might be it indeed. English is not my first language, and I had thought that there had to be some word that matched the description. I guess I'll stick to describing the feeling in absence of a word for the phenomena. Haunt is good. Traumatized is a bit over-dramatic I didn't knew that German "traum" though. Seeing as how "trauma" originates in Greek, I fear the connection might not be noticed by all who read this scene
Well.... um, err, notwithstanding @Wreybies 'funk' which I figure is the best fit (but a lesser known word alas) maybe it could be drawn from another element like a good night out on the beer 'I was hungover by an intense dream'?
I think you're on the right path with describing as opposed to a singular word. That kind of dream hangover can feel very physical too. Skin crawling and sensory triggers as well
dread......trepidation.......a lingering sinking feeling accompanied by that "heart in throat" sensation......an engulfing sense of loss, absent actual loss............an overwhelming or lingering sense of dread........a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach......anxiety
I think you're right. It was (perhaps) misused in my generation to mean a certain feel in music... or, of course, Grand Funk Railroad (the band for anyone who doesn't remember). For those reasons, I find it hard to think of 'funk' meaning mood without immediately calling to mind Bloom County where characters often had a handy balloon over their heads pointing out that they were 'in a funk.'
English is not my first language, but, irrispective of that, in my opinion that feeling after a very bad dream could be summed up in a simple... shaken. Maybe I'm a very simple soul...
Thanks. The dream certainly did leave him shaken, although that's more of a description for his physical state rather than his feelings. I've now wrapped the sentence up like this; The dream had been vivid and terrible, leaving him confused and shaken. An unsettling feeling gnawed at his stomach, a feeling that he knew would haunt him for the rest of the day. So rather than picking a single word to describe it, I went for a description of the feeling, as others have suggested.
