There is a distinct pleasure that accompanies the discovery of a word. It need not be a new word to feel new to you; just an unknown quantity introduced to your vocabulary. Sounds and meanings you can enjoy the timbre and texture of in your mouth, testing them out in private and then in public to observe their various effects. Some are words which might frequently be proven useful in conversation (inane; adj. silly or pointless: "Stop asking inane questions"), others which may require that you have to carefully engineer the right situation to slip them into a sentence (jingoism; n. an aggressive form of nationalism: "I found his jingoism off-putting"). Some you might only get use on a very rare occasion, discovered by chance and sequestered in your armoury for special occasions (emetic; adj. nauseating or vomit-inducing: "The circumstances of the monster's creation were violent, and thoroughly emetic").

These pleasures are distinct from those of discovering a word in another language that has a meaning so precise as to have no comparison in your own tongue. Words which acquire fan-followings and begin to crop up with more and more frequency (saudade; adj. Portugese. An emotional state of sadness brought on by nostalgia and longing: "Looking at the photographs of her mother, she was overcome by saudade"), while others have moved into our language and attained work permits, no longer tourists but expats who form an important part of our linguistic economy (schadenfreude; adj. German. Pleasure derived from witnessing another's pain: "There is definite schadenfreude in his interactions with his ex-wife"). These carry exotic tastes of foreign syllables, requiring unorthodox vocalisations and a hint of jealousy.

Then there are the neologisms, words which are freshly minted to accomodate the changes in our society, the smiling graduates who are begrudgingly allowed work experience but whom very few people seem to want to hire (photoshop: v. to digitally manipulate an image: "You can tell from the lighting that her skin has been photoshopped"). Maybe it's an old word that just wants to re-train for a new career (friend; v. to connect via social networking: "I met her at a party and friended her"). Every now and then, people will suddenly realise that these upstarts have turned out to be valuable citizens, and their jargony origins will be forgotten (laser; n.  concentrated beam of light. Acronym taken from light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation: "The teacher pointed his laser at the blackboard").

Neolgisms represent a need to have the right labels for everything. A need to say "this is just so", and be sure of it. Some observers hear the foreign imports and sigh, wishing that the English language played host to such refined, poetic lexical artifacts. Personally, I am glad to find these lacunae. To really work for meaning is not a chore. To find the closest compound of words and phrases to approximate feeling is rewarding in itself; to make use of neologisms and ambassadors of other languages and still fall short means only that you appreciate that language is always a compromise where we must meet each other halfway and say not "I know" but "I understand". Lacunae represent the sheer impossibility of categorising the entirety of the world; how appropriate it is that so often these are found when it comes to describing the describer.

The gaps are always where we find ourselves.