Word: SobremesaTabling time to be together.

Etymology: Sobremesa, Spanish, translating literally to “over the table”; sobre means “on top of” and mesa means “table.”

Meaning: Sobremesa refers to the tradition of relaxing at the table after a meal and losing yourself in languorous conversations that can last for hours. Chairs are pushed back, time softens and the table becomes a setting for card games, gentle debate and after-dinner drinks. It’s a chance to slow down and simply enjoy the company of those around you—to forget, for a moment, everything else that you need to do. 

As the sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel noted, the shared meal is fundamental to being human. Eating together, he argued, is the “quintessential social occasion,” transforming a primal act—eating for survival—into a microcosm of the way we come together to create communities on a far grander scale. Staying at the table, long after the food has been tidied away, to chat, confess and speculate is both natural and necessary: a leisurely, slightly indulgent expression of something essential to the human experience.