This eclectic collection is a cabinet of curiosities from the world’s languages, literatures, philosophies, and subcultures—a mosaic of forgotten words, sharp idioms, and poignant phrases that capture the human condition in all its absurdity, beauty, and precision.
Here you’ll find ancient echoes (haruspicate, kairos, hamingja) alongside modern coinages (weaponized incompetence, hallucinationship, diarrhea warrior). Some evoke grace and balance (omotenashi, lagom, yutori), others bite with irony or despair (clown country, digital dark ages, exporting extinction). A few are tender (gigil, dayenu), many are darkly funny (Encyclopedia Brownshirt, brunchlord chowderheads), and several cut straight to uncomfortable truths (himpathy, parallel monologues, displacement behaviors).
These entries aren’t just vocabulary; they’re tiny windows into cultural mindsets, psychological quirks, and fleeting moments of insight. Together, they remind us how language stretches—sometimes playfully, sometimes painfully—to name what we feel but rarely say. A delightful, occasionally unsettling lexicon for anyone who loves words that linger.
- prima donna of the penthouse
- ineffective activism
- chinkanas, Quechua, maze
- nezahualli, collar of fasting
- savage in the kitchen
- haruspicate, divination through looking at entrails
- jim-jams, nausea
- digital dark ages
- omotenashi, a Japanese approach to anticipating someone’s needs and providing a level of service that goes beyond expectations
- kick and kill
- abbondanza, Italian for abundance
- inexhaustible locomotive of living
- a deep well of slub
- Ave atque vale, Latin, I salute you, and goodbye. Normally used with hero’s.
- Oddyessay
- too old for tears
- silent season, retirement, when no one cares about you anymore
- bumbling and stumbling
- the dark side of who cares
- exporting extinction
- clown country
- yutori, Japanese, slowing down to savor the moment
- makyō, Japanese, 魔境, forsaken place, hellhole, place of demons and monsters
- a cartography of inner space
- gigil, a Tagalog expression for witnessing something adorable
- kairos, Greek, the precisely right time to do something
- doxastic voluntarism
- man on the Clapham omnibus, an ordinary reasonable person
- momager, mom + manager
- the cold stethoscope of fear
- uomo singolare, singular man
- Encyclopedia Brownshirt
- okuka lokole, Congolese, jungle wizard
- takiwātanga, Māori, “in their own time and space”, probably analogous to autistic
- onkel radost, Czech, Uncle Joy
- mirror muscles
- weaponized incompetence
- hallucinationship
- digital internment camps
- diarrhea warrior
- sheer perversity of diversity
- Look for win/win/win—(you, the other guy, the collective).
- brunchlord chowderheads
- hamingja, a female spirit in Norse mythology, living in accordance with your nature
- granfalloon, a group of people who affect a shared identity or purpose, but whose mutual association is meaningless, e.g. , Hoosier
- marshmellow war crime
- timewave zero
- displacement behaviors, ways of not sitting with the problem
- japery, acting like a clown or buffoon
- zhuzh, a small improvement that completed the picture
- parallel monologues, when two people take turns talking to themselves while appearing to engage in dialogue.
- Gerede, idle chatter that fills time without creating meaning, from Heidegger.
- lashon hara, evil speech
- minunthadios, short-lived, Homer
- Pisces mortui solum cum flumine natant. Only dead fish go with the flow.
- guuzen, Japanese, something that happens by chance
- Neiman Marxists
- Eppure si muove, and yet it moves
- Neo-Amish
- art quake
- tama, an offering or promise for someone that requires help, a miracle
- action over impact, doing something for the sake of doing something
- rimpianti, Italian, regret for not doing something you wish you had
- dayenu, Hebrew, it would have been enough.
- outside the uterus
- the engineer, building bridges without crossing them
- La cattiva notizia, Italian, the bad news
- fika, Sweden, short break in the afternoon to enjoy social connection.
- lagom, Swedish, pronounced lah-gom, roughly translates to not too little, not too much, just right.
- manqué, frustrated in one’s ambitions
- Glomar response, when you do not want to give any information
- Everthreads
- transmogrifies
- kuchitome, eating vegetables first
- himpathy
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