gemütlichkeit

   or Gemütlichkeit

   A quality akin to coziness that one finds in especially comfortable rooms ? warm, friendly, welcoming, informal, and not too large. "Cordiality" and "hominess" are close to being synonyms, but "Gemütlichkeit" is a German word for which no English word is an entirely satisfactory equivalent. Although this quality invariably depends most on the attitudes of ones hosts in an environment, it seems less likely that gemütlichkeit would be found in rooms furnished in a unified style of almost any kind, but rather in rooms conveying a more eclectic and cheerfully personal taste; and also one that's clean but unafraid to show some wear. (pr. g?-MOOT-lik-kyt) See aesthetics, architecture, Gesamtkünstwerk, love, palimpsest, quality of life, and wabi-sabi.