When I come across an interesting word or phrase during the course of the year, I write it down. Previous years: 2017, 2016.
- tanquam explorator, I am wont to cross over even to the enemy’s camp—not as a deserter, but as a scout. —Epicurus
- heta linjen-upploppet, the hotline riot
- masspsykos , mass psychosis
- dystopian fever dream
- “Hope looks forward. Faith knows it has already received and acts accordingly.” —Florence Shinn
- humanity has become its own ghost…
- Congratulations on being unfrozen from that glacier!
- the mists of idleness
- cascading catastrophic effects
- construal levels, relation between psychological distance and the extent to which people’s thinking (e.g., about objects and events) is abstract or concrete
- CRAFT (Can’t Remember a Fucking Thing) syndrome
- poster behemoth
- a hemorrhoid of a human
- polisson, French for little scamp
- acephalic, no head or ruler
- carnival carnivores
- no wahala, Nigerian for no problem
- iridescence, the phenomenon of certain surfaces that appear to gradually change colour as the angle of view or the angle of illumination changes
- Weltanschauung, German for world view
- cursed world
- Tyburn Tree, gallows of London for 600 years
- Konsytucja, Polish for Let’s follow it, [the Constitution]
- Denktagebuch, thought journal
- tzompantli, skull rack
- senescence, biological ageing is the gradual deterioration of function characteristic of most complex lifeforms
- kidult, kid + adult
- Confusopoly
- saudade, presence of absence
- paradox of tolerance
- prosopagnosia, face blindness
- Buridan’s ass, paradox involving making decision between two equally desirable choices and not being able to choose
- idiolect, individual’s dialect
- soulless droid
- anhedonia, a diverse array of deficits in hedonic function, including reduced motivation or ability to experience pleasure
- imp of the perverse
- antecedent reappraisal
- fission-fusion species
- rhinencephalon, nose brain
- The Wellesley effect, synchronized periods of females living together
- L.H.O.O.Q., Elle a chaud au cul, she has a hot ass
- oleaginous, oily, falsely earnest
- bricolage, construction of something by whatever material is available
- cladistic, classification by most recent ancestor
- agents of temporal distortion
- backdoor symphony, farts
- synecdochic totem, name of part for whole
- metonymy, figure of speech where one word is replaced by another which it is closely related
- postlapsarian, after lapse or failure
- stadialism, staged development
- minoritarians, a political structure or process in which a minority segment of a population has a certain degree of primacy
- noetic, requiring use of the mind
- cathexis, energy invested in an idea or object
- dragooned, coerced
- paper fantasy
- pleasure threshold
- bogarted, took an unfair share
- doyen/doyenne, senior member
- shrapnel consciousness
- xenofeminist
- deixis, me or here, words that require context
- Power requires neither permission nor forgiveness
- immortal cancerscape
- chthonic hum, subterranean hum
- sealed in a shrine of fakeness
- carnival of thoughts
- read the unwritten text
- schizo-critical
- rip the skin of this tumorous cosmopocket
- palimpsest, manuscript where writing has been partially erased and written over
- basket of fucked
- precariat, the precarious class
- It happened in a dream, or don’t worry about it
- quisling, a person who collaborates with an enemy occupying force, traitor
- a whole host of horribles
- Ciemny lud to kupi, roughly translated, means “The ignorant peasants will buy it.”
- zrewoltowane, in revolt against the Communist system in Poland
- tsundoku, the Japanese idea of letting books pile up even though you have plenty of things to already read
- Stultitia, mental agitation, distraction, change of opinions and wishes
- Alektorophobia, fear of chickens
- cornpone, folksy, homespun
- Pole pole, slowly in Swahili
- mas morium, the way of your elders
- sandbag countdown
- linguistic chauvinism
- prepotenza, bullying, Italian
- wokescenti
- Exopolitic E.T. Agendas
- Abatwa, the mythical little people who live on the top of the mountain in Africa
- foma, harmless untruths
- …a life without explanation
- Reincarnation Counselor
- trogloxenes, cave visitors, bats
- troglobites, cave dwellers
- troglophiles, cave lovers
- Sumerian goddess of beer, Ninkasi
- Mundus ipse est ingens deorum omnium templum, The world itself is a huge temple of all the gods
- corporate pablum
- Peto’s paradox, at the species level, the incidence of cancer does not appear to correlate with the number of cells in an organism
- Kundalini awakening, awakening to this vision of ourselves and the world we live in as ultimately nondual
- palo santo, Spanish for holy stick
- caudillo, a strong leader and the fierce devotion of the unruly masses who follow him
- Nostradamus of failed romance
- talbukcha, “person who escaped the North [Korea]”
- Kirimuti and Tomenika, last two elders of Easter Island that spoke with Katherine Routledge
- lost continent of Mu, 19th-century traveler and writer Augustus Le Plongeon, who claimed that several ancient civilizations, such as those of Egypt and Mesoamerica, were created by refugees from Mu — which he stated was located in the Atlantic Ocean.
- reverse boustrophedon, means in the manner of an ox plowing the field, reversing after each line
- Te Pito ‘o te Henua, means either “navel of the world” or “end of the world”, refers to Easter Island
- rongorongo, Easter Island script no one can decipher
- hairen, man of the sea
- taikonauts, Chinese astronaut
- gravity of reality
- rasputitsa, a Russian language term for two periods of the year when travel on unpaved roads becomes difficult, owing to muddy conditions from rain or thawing snow
- spiritual Alcatraz
- everywhen
- dreamtime
- doxa: ‘the common opinion, commonsense repeated over and over, a Medusa that petrifies anyone who watches it,’ as the cultural theorist Roland Barthes defined the term in 1975.
- invenzione, invention or creative vision
- disegno, drawing or design
- filosofessa, learned woman
- asymmetry of passions
- dream machine
- mono no aware, deep awareness of things
- half sterile and half feral
- Post-mortem technique
- obsequy, funeral rite
- ‘Okhota na ved’m.’ (That’s Russian for Witch Hunt.)
- It is forbidden to forbid.
- Kucheh Kharabat, the alley of desolation, Afghanistan
- honestum, the right
- dreaming with others
- Nyepi, annual ‘Day of Silence’
- Al mattino ha l’oro in bocca—the morning has gold in its mouth.
- paradigm blindness
- armed lifeboat
- a normal-distribution mindset
- suicide in the land of the dead
- atom, a- not and tom, divisible
- disaster, comes from dis- against and aster, the stars
- animalculus, little animal, microscopic
- stygian, gloomy and dark
- legerdemain, sleight-of-hand
- kunikoi, dog philosophers
- insurgent universalism
- tragedy, τραγωδία, contracted from trag(o)-aoidiā = “goat song” from tragos = “goat” and aeidein = “to sing”, Nietzsche speculation that satyrs were the Greek chorus
- djellabah, loose fitting female Muslim garb
- suicide contagion, suicide of the well-known led other people to follow
- hypomnemata, personal notes and reflections written day by day
- prapidōn, great wealth of thoughts
- pure love, love that demands nothing in return
- parrhēsia, provocative freedom of speech
- haireseis, attitudes of thought and life
- brolly, umbrella
- nomen est omen, the name is a sign
- turnkey tyranny
- askēsis, training or self-transformation
- phusis, the beginning
- Silurian hypothesis, there was an advanced technological society before the modern age
- oriflamme, banner as rallying point
- Deus Absconditis, hidden God
- vendido, a sellout
- “No mames güey. Cállate el hocico!” loosely translated, it means, “Quit fucking around you dickweeds and shut your fucking traps!”
- Gesamtkunstwerk, total work of art
- sharenting. share + parenting
- muhasasa, nepotism in Iraq
- bachaqueros, black market traffickers in Venezuela
- grotesquerie
- mehrabān, the guardian of love, Persian for kind
- pobreton, pauper
- everybody a carnival unto themselves
- chatter and scroll
- hobo tracks
- overcoded world
- The fossil is not the mechanism
- cobaias, Guinea pigs, esp. poor getting cosmetic surgery in Brazil
- “…a fuck rife with ignominy.”
- I do whatever I want because I could die any minute. — Morgan Parker
- Heimat ist da, wo man schwätzt wie mar – home is where people talk like us
- If the cucumber is bitter, throw it out. If there are brambles in the path, go around.
- Principled without being fanatical and flexible without being opportunistic
- Opinions are like ass holes, they’re best when not shared too widely.
- McOndo — a McDonald’s-ization of García Márquez fictional town Macondo
- persist and resist, life philosophy
- revolución rioplatense, River Plate revolution
- cyborg soul
- gnothi seauton, know thyself, ancient Greek
- Abusement Park
- Beauty capitalism
- Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime, Any Kind.
- grognard, grumbler, from French
- hygge, Denmark, “intentional intimacy,” which can happen when you have safe, balanced and harmonious shared experiences”
- koselig, Norway, see hygge
- mysig, Sweden, see hygge
- gezenlligheid, Netherlands, see hygge
- gemütlichkeit, Germany, see hygge
- skinflint, miser
- contumacious, stubborn refusal to obey authorities
- trolleys and cash-registers, America
- abulia, absence of will
- maraṇasati, a Buddhist meditation practice that uses various visualization and contemplation techniques to meditate on the nature of death.
- sinceratrons
- electroculture
- cariz, χάρις, cháris, grace
- odalisque, a female slave, a concubine in a harem
- hara hachi bu, eat until 80% full
- What is essential is invisible to the eye. —Fred Rodgers
- kunlangeta, Eskimo word for sociopath
- arankan, cold souls, yoruba tribe
- fakakta, shat upon
- nahual, disguise or mask
- in xochitl, in cuicatl, in flower in song, composing song poems
- urban idealism
- mutatis mutandis, “the necessary changes having been made”
- Trollheiman, Home of the Trolls, Norwegian
- metempsychosis, transmigration of the soul, esp. after death
- hypetaxen, subordinated
- tokamak, donut shaped vacuum chamber used in fusion reactors
- panegyrist, a person who makes public speeches
- Príncipe de las Tinieblas, Prince of Darkness
- Hohmann transfer orbit, In orbital mechanics, the Hohmann transfer orbit is an elliptical orbit used to transfer between two circular orbits of different radii in the same plane.
- suerte, fate in Moroccan
