Emotion or feeling or mood

Emotions

Emotions come and go quickly.

They’re also much more likely to be caused by immediate circumstances; something that someone just said, something that you witnessed or some memories that you had.

Feelings

In English, we use “feel” for both physical and emotional sensation — we can say we physically feel cold, but we can also emotionally feel cold. This is a clue to the meaning of “feeling,” it’s something we sense.

Feelings are often fuelled by a mix of emotions, and last for longer than emotions.

Moods

Moods stay for a while. Moods are generally emotional feelings. Moods can last minutes, hours, probably even days. When we have these moody periods, they often feel like stages that we are going through and they are hard to shift.

Mood is heavily influenced by circumstances: pressure at work, pressure at home, money trouble, the environment (weather, lighting, people around us), physiology (what we’ve been eating, how we’ve been exercising, how healthy we are), and finally our mental state (where we’re focusing attention and our current emotions).