[title] I could swear I came across it before, but then again, maybe I dreamed it. 🫣
Not once have I heard it in the context of something that didn’t happen though
It’s possible to be used in that context, same way OP is saying that he feels nostalgic for something that didn’t happened. Saudades is a feeling of nostalgia. So if someone was asking the exact same question in Portuguese he would ask something among the lines of “what’s the name for saudades of something that happened in a dream”
But now we’re stuck where we were before, it’s no different from nostalgia or longing in that regard where it’s not implied that it’s something that didn’t happen, which I think is what OP wants.
something that didn’t happen though
Maybe because longing for something or someone you knew is also Saudade ofc, and is the more commonly known, like for people close to you. Otherwise " sinto falta de" ( I miss).
Afaik [ Brazil and some Portuguese fiends], you can have Saudade for something that might have happened, something you thought happened, never will happen, or even Saudade for something you don’t know ever happened, or without knowing whatever it is, or knowing whatever it is or coming from; like undefined. Like a state of being.
That’s also how it’s said in the wiki page I linked , a quote:
The Dictionary from the Royal Galician Academy, on the other hand, defines saudade as an "intimate feeling and mood caused by the longing for something absent that is being missed. This can take different aspects, from concrete realities (a loved one, a friend, the motherland, the homeland…) to the mysterious and transcendent.
