Words

I just told Sarah that being excited and slightly terrified were often the same feeling. But I got to thinking, is there a single word that conveys that? A word that means “excited and slightly terrified?”

But then I asked myself if this was necessary. Certainly the phrase itself conveys “excited and slightly terrified” sufficiently. 

But, if a word was able to incorporate excited and slightly terrified into one, would the word really be describing “excited and slightly terrified,” or rather a new feeling? Would the parts become a more general whole?

And then, has this already happened? Is “excited” a mushing-together of other, more specific feelings/words?

So building feelings isn’t hard. “Excited and slightly terrified” is an example. But what about deconstructing feelings. How do you explain a certain type of excited, without describing a thousand types it’s not? That, I believe, takes a great amount of skill.

I suppose putting the feeling in context would be one way to do it.