Get Feeling Vocabulary

Carroll Izard identified ten primary emotions: fear, anger, shame, contempt, disgust, guilt, distress, interest, surprise, and joy—emotions that cannot be reduced to more basic emotions but that can be combined to produce other emotions.

It was created by psychologist Robert Plutchik and is based on his theory of emotions. Plutchick believed that humans can experience over 34,000 unique emotions but, ordinarily, they experience eight primary emotions. These primary emotions include anger, fear, sadness, joy, disgust, surprise, trust, and anticipation.

There are many other ways you can help your child increase their emotional literacy. Make a Big List of Feelings. Add Sounds to Your Feelings List. Read Topical Books. Play Emotional Charades. Change 'If You're Happy and You Know It' Make a Feelings Collage. Keep a Feelings Journal. Role-play Social Narratives and Review.

An emotional vocabulary is one in which language accurately describes how you are feeling. 2 As parents, we actively encourage our kids to express their feelings with words. But as adults, we often fall short. This is often because, as adults, we are expected to be better adjusted and stable.

That makes sense — after all, human beings can experience over 34,000 different emotions. That's a lot to keep track of, and it's certainly a lot to feel. More conservative estimates identify 27 distinct emotional states — but even that is a lot to sift through.

The patterns of emotion that we found corresponded to 25 different categories of emotion: admiration, adoration, appreciation of beauty, amusement, anger, anxiety, awe, awkwardness, boredom, calmness, confusion, craving, disgust, empathic pain, entrancement, excitement, fear, horror, interest, joy, nostalgia, relief, ...