The word is famously known as the "untranslatable" heart of the Portuguese language. It describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic longing for an absent person, place, or thing that one loves, often with the bittersweet knowledge that the object of that longing may never return. The Core Essence: "The Presence of Absence"
Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa perhaps defined it best: "Saudade is this: the presence of absence". It is a complex mixture of contradictory feelings—a "pleasure you suffer, an ailment you enjoy". Saudade