Saudade is a Portuguese word describing a profoundly nostalgic longing for a beloved yet absent someone or something The word traces back to the Latin word for solitude and appears in Portuguese literature as far back as the 13th century It grew deeply tied to Portugal's Age of Discovery when sailors left home with no guarantee of return and those left behind had no word for what they felt until saudade gave the feeling a name It is the love that remains after everything else has left or as the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa once wrote: Saudade is the presence of absence