Yet neurobiologists assure us that this is what emotion is: a sensory response within the body to sensory input from the outside world, often in the presence of a basic need—food, sex, fight-or-flight. Unfortunately we are completely untrained in specifying these bodily reactions, and there are far too few ways of saying them. The Hawaiians may have seventy words for “pink,” but when the doctor asks us to describe a pain, it’s on a scale of one to ten, sharp or ache or throbbing?

Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction, Tenth Edit…, loc. 124