This essay suggests the need to abandon vernacular terms used for emotions, and a preliminary attempt to define them instead. First described is the massive confusion in popular and scientific conceptions of emotion. Although recently there has been considerable interest, we are still in the flat earth stage. The main problem is a sizeable structure of erroneous assumptions, such as venting anger’gets it off your chest.’ There seem to be at least four defenses against confronting emotions directly: 1. Ignore. 2. Generalize (using only abstract terms: emotions, affect, arousal, etc.). 3. Disguise: use one of the vast number of alternative words that hide emotional content, such as’an awkward moment.’ 4.