(Yiddish) A mixture of pleasure and pride, particularly the kind that a parent receives from a child.
[noun]
When your daughter spends all morning cutting and pasting and drawing and then proudly presents you with a valentine, the feeling that wells up inside is the emotion that Jews describe as nakhes (NOKH-ess, with the KH pronounced in the Hebrew manner, in the back of the throat). It is a special kind of pleasure, a feeling of love infused with sensations of pride and joy. It is something one receives, as in: "May you get only nakhes from your son!" A secondary and far less emotionally powerful meaning is a general feeling of gratification one receives from creating something that turns out well: "I got a lot of nakhes from working in my garden, especially at harvest time" or "I got nakhes from building that chair."
from They Have A Word For It by Howard Rheingold
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