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I just learned from John Carlton how important it is to have a broad vocabulary of emotional words, specially when writing to women.

And I thought about how I can expand my emotional vocabulary.

That’s why I assembled this list of emotional words. Now there are different approaches to what can be an “emotional word”, but my criteria was that it could fill in this blank: “I feel ___”.

Before I show the list here, I want to share something I noticed… I kind of had a feeling that most of the words were describing negative emotions, so I then broke it up for me and listed the positive and negative emotions in separate lists. The result? 147 words that describe NEGATIVE emotions. 55 that describe POSITIVE emotions.

(I’m a positive kid, so I do not attribute this to my emotional state – and quiet frankly, I just “stole” this list from different places including wikipedia.org, thesaurus.reference.com and dictionary.reference.com, so it’s not something that I just came up with from the top of my head).

I do remember reading that a negative pang is more intense than a positive pang, and that one negative pang is NOT balanced out by one positive pang. (According to some psychologists, it is estimated that 1 negative pang needs 2.5 positive pangs to put a person back into neutral). And I also remember that people will do much more to avoid loss and pain than to gain pleasure. Seems like this also reflects in our language.

Anyway, with no further redo, here my list of emotional words. If you have words that should be added, just leave a comment and I’ll put them in.

adored
afraid
aggravated
agitated
agonized
alarmed
alienated
amazed
amused
angry
anguished
annoyed
antsy
anxious
apprehensive
aroused
ashamed
astonished
attracted
awful
awkward
bashful
bewildered
bitter
blissed
bored
brave
calm
caring
cautious
cheerful
comfortable
compassionate
concerned
confident
confused
contempt
content
critical
curious
cynical
defeated
dejected
delighted
depressed
desired
disappointed
discouraged
disgusted
disliked
dismayed
distressed
disturbed
down
dreadful
eager
ecstatic
edgy
elated
embarrassed
encouraged
enraged
enthralled
enthused
envious
euphoric
exasperated
excited
excited
exhausted
exhausted
exhilarated
fatigued
fearful
ferocious
fidgety
fond
frightened
frustrated
funny
furious
glad
gleeful
gloomy
greedy
griefstricken
grouchy
grumpy
guilty
happy
hassled
hateful
helpless
hesitant
homesick
hopeful
hopeless
horrible
hostile
humiliated
hurt
hysterical
impatient
indifferent
infatuated
inferior
insecure
insulted
irate
irked
irritated
isolated
jealous
jittery
jolly
joyous
lazy
leery
liked
loathe
lonely
loved
loving
mad
mean
melancholical
mischievous
miserable
moody
mortified
neglected
nervous
nice
numb
optimistic
outraged
overwhelmed
panicky
passionate
patient
pessimistic
pleased
proud
puzzled
queasy
rageful
raptured
regretful
rejected
relieved
reluctant
remorseful
resentful
restless
revulsed
ridiculous
riled
rushed
sad
safe
satisfied
scared
scornful
secure
sensitive

shaky

shocked
shy
silly
sleepy
sorry
spiteful
stressed
surprised
suspicious
sympathetic
tender
tense
terrified
thrilled
tired
tormented
triumphant
troubled
uncomfortable
uneasy
unhappy
unsafe
unsettled
upset
vengeful
vicious
victorious
warm
weary
woeful
wonderful
worried
wrathful
yucky
zany
zealless
zestless

I also sorted the words by the number of occurences that Google came up with. Obviously – this isn’t flawless. For example a word like “content” is on top of the list not because of the meaning that describes the emotion, but because it’s “content” as in “We need content for our website.” and the same is true for words like “down” and others. Still you can go through the list and figure out yourself easily which ones are as popular because of multiple meanings and which one because people use this word to describe their emotion often.

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