feeling

noun

Feeling — the lived experience of emotion as it moves through the body

Definition

The experiencing of affective and emotional states; "she had a feeling of euphoria"; "he had terrible feelings of guilt"; "I disliked him and the feeling was mutual"

In depth

Feeling names the direct experiencing of affective and emotional states, the inner sensation of joy, grief, fear, or love as it is actually lived, rather than merely named or classified from outside. The word emphasizes immediacy and subjectivity, the difference between knowing about an emotion and being inside one.

Origin

The word descends from Old English felan, to touch or perceive by touch, the same root behind the verb 'to feel' in its most literal, physical sense. That tactile origin still quietly shapes the word's figurative use: an emotional feeling, etymologically, is something touched and registered by the body, not merely understood by the mind.

Usage examples

"She had a feeling of euphoria she could not entirely account for, standing alone on the empty platform."

"He distrusted any decision made on feeling alone, though he could never quite explain why feeling seemed to know things logic did not."

"There was a feeling in the house that something had changed, though nothing visible had moved."

How to use it

Feeling is indispensable in nearly all narrative and lyric writing, valued for its immediacy and intimacy. It tends to suit interior, first-person, or close third-person prose especially well, where a writer wants the reader to inhabit emotion rather than simply observe it.