Saudade means what, exactly?

If you are going to Brazil, be forewarned: when you come back home, if you do, you will have added a few special words to your emotional vocabulary. You will join us in the group that knows the feeling yet cannot explain the meaning of the word . . . . saudade. If you can explain it, you've made a poor translation. It has a place of its own, it changes you more than your vocabulary.

If you haven't been somewhere but yearn to see it, you may be getting a glimpse of saudade. It means longing for someone or something, more or less in the realm of "I miss you," in English. Yet it carries more than a longing, more than missing. Yearning . . . . a hole carved in one's heart, a feeling which stands on its own as much as it permeates one's whole being . . . . It simply cannot be translated.

A Brazilian person has saudade or feels saudade. Tenho saudades do Brasil or Sinto saudades . . . portraits of a melancholic yet sweet longing. It transports me there when I say it.

Credit:  Neise Cavini Turchin, "Longing for Brazil"