对不在眼前的人与事物的深切思念——甜里带苦。思念的对象也许已经失去，也许永不再来，也许从未真正拥有过。 A melancholic longing for someone or something absent — perhaps lost, perhaps never to return, perhaps never truly had.
A melancholic longing for someone or something absent — perhaps lost, perhaps never to return, perhaps never truly had. 对不在眼前的人与事物的深切思念——甜里带苦。思念的对象也许已经失去，也许永不再来，也许从未真正拥有过。
词源etymology
拉丁语 sōlitās, sōlitātem（孤独）→ 古葡萄牙语 soidade → saudade。 这个词的血统里原本就带着「孤」字：先是独处的状态，后来慢慢转向独处时心里装着的那个人。
Latin sōlitās, sōlitātem (“solitude”) → Old Portuguese soidade → saudade. The word’s bloodline begins in aloneness: first the state of being alone, then — slowly — the person you hold in mind while alone.
背景the story
它是葡萄牙文化的承重墙之一：法多（fado）唱的几乎全是它——一种对无可挽回之事的、认命的渴望。 巴西把每年 1 月 30 日定为「思念日」（Dia da Saudade）。
英语世界认识它，很大程度上要感谢英国学者 Aubrey Bell 1912 年的《In Portugal》——OED 里 saudade 的最早英语书证正是这本书。他那句定义（见下方引文）流传至今，仍是英语里讲这个词讲得最准的一段话。
常有人说 saudade 是「葡萄牙人独有、他族无法体会的情感」——那是浪漫化的民族叙事，不是语言学。 词是葡语的，情感是人类共有的；它的特别在于压缩度：把一整种复杂的甜苦，压进了三个音节。
One of the load-bearing walls of Portuguese culture: fado sings of little else — a resigned yearning for what cannot be recovered. Brazil keeps 30 January as the Day of Saudade (Dia da Saudade).
English met the word largely through the scholar Aubrey Bell’s In Portugal (1912) — which happens to be the OED’s earliest English evidence for it. His definition (quoted below) is still the best English has managed.
You will hear that saudade is “an emotion only the Portuguese can feel.” That is romantic nationalism, not linguistics. The word is Portuguese; the feeling is human. What is special is the compression: a whole bittersweetness packed into three syllables.
中文里的邻居neighbors in chinese
「思念」最近，但 saudade 比思念多一层：它连从未发生过的事也可以思念。 「怅惘」有那个空落落的姿态，却没有具体的对象。 汉语里最接近的也许是「此情可待成追忆，只是当时已惘然」——可那是一联诗，不是一个词。 差别不在「能不能翻译」，在于人家把这一整联，收进了一个名词。
思念 (“longing for someone absent”) comes closest, but saudade reaches one layer further: it can long for things that never happened. 怅惘 has the emptiness but no object. The nearest Chinese may be a line of Li Shangyin — 此情可待成追忆，只是当时已惘然 — but that is a couplet, not a word. The difference is not translatability; it is that Portuguese filed the whole couplet under a single noun.
The famous saudade of the Portuguese is a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, a turning towards the past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness.葡萄牙人那著名的 saudade，是对某种不存在、也多半不可能存在之物的、模糊而持续的渴望；是对「此刻之外」的渴望，一种朝向过去或朝向未来的转身——不是激烈的不满，也不是刺痛的悲伤，而是一种慵懒的、做着梦的怅惘。（中译） Aubrey F. G. Bell Aubrey F. G. Bell · In Portugal In Portugal · 1912
Twenty years in another country, and still some evenings the smell of grilled sardines fills her with saudade — for a street that has long since changed, and a version of herself who never left. 自拟例句 our own example, not a quotation The fado singer held the last note like something she was not ready to give back — saudade, set to music. 自拟例句 our own example, not a quotation He felt saudade for the person he had been at twenty-two, which is to say, for a stranger. 自拟例句 our own example, not a quotation 已入 OED（英语首证 1912）。 英文正式写作可用，首次出现建议斜体并略作解释。 它自带葡语文化的语境，写 fado、写移民、写离散时最贴切；泛泛代替 nostalgia 用，就浪费它了。
In the OED (first English evidence 1912). Usable in formal English; italicize on first use and gloss briefly. It carries its Portuguese context with it — at its best in writing about fado, migration, diaspora. As a fancy synonym for nostalgia, it is wasted.