Saudade vs Longing: What’s the Difference?

The difference at a glance

Saudade contains love — it is named for what you miss *because* you loved it, and the missing is inseparable from that love. Longing is pure absence: a gap waiting to be filled. Saudade acknowledges that the gap cannot be filled, and holds its presence anyway. You can long for something you have never had; saudade is specifically for what you have known and lost. Longing wants resolution. Saudade has made a kind of peace with the fact that none is coming.

What does Saudade mean?

noun · /saʊˈdɑːdɪ/

A deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for something or someone loved and lost; the presence of an absence.

Saudade in a sentence

She felt a saudade for the city she'd left that was sharper than any sadness.

Fado music is the sound of saudade — beautiful and aching at once.

What does Longing mean?

noun · /ˈlɒŋ.ɪŋ/

A persistent feeling of wanting something or someone — especially something not easily obtained or something absent. Longing is desire that has accepted it may not be fulfilled.

Longing in a sentence

The photographs produced a longing for a time she hadn't lived through — a nostalgia for someone else's past.

Longing is different from desire in that it knows the distance. Desire might be satisfied; longing has already accepted that the thing is far away.

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