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Aliferous, aligerous

Wingèd.

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Boustrophedonic

Text that reads in one direction on one line and in the opposite direction on the next line. Can be highly efficient or highly inefficient. Named after the Greek word for a style of ploughing.

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Hypnerotomachia

Beautiful, arcane, inscrutable love story published in 1500 by Aldus Manutius.

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Hypotyposis

Vivid, colorful description of scenes or events. Lively, can create the illusion of reality. Used in ekphrasis.

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Nowrūz

“The New Day,” the first day of spring and the first day of the new year in the Persian calendar. The holiday is at least 3000 years old and has been registered as UNESCO cultural heritage.

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Saphoo

Juice that makes the thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, according to David Lynch’s Mentat Mantra in Dune. Good name for geek cosmetics.

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Normalien

Student at France’s elite école normale supérieure, one of the grandes écoles outside the normal public university system. From Tony Judt’s delightful description of his experience and perspective...

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Fuxing

Chinese word for renaissance, reblossoming, rebirth. When President Xi Jinping stirred his people’s imaginations by invoking “the Chinese dream” (zhongguo meng) at the recent People’s Congress, he...

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Cisleithania, Transleithania and the Condominium of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Sections of the old Austro-Hungarian empire. Cisleithania was a word the Viennese used for the former Austrian Empire, Transleithania meant the former Hungarian Empire, and the territories of Bosnia...

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Nolars, nightzebs, nocs, necs, nallyrakers, neotremes and nonmalrigers

  Things starting with “N” that were eliminated by the machine that did Nothing in Stanisław Lem’s The Cyberiad (as quoted by Matt Ruff in Sewer, Gas & Electric). The nocs came back, the necs never...

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Mast stepping

The German Navy’s large sailing vessel the Gorch Fock can lower its masts to pass under bridges on the beautiful 100-km Kiel canal between the North Sea and the Baltic.

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ӝ, ӟ, ӥ, ӧ and ӵ

Five characters in the Udmurt language that aren’t in the standard Cyrillic alphabet: zhe, ze, i, o and che + two dots. The charming grandmothers of Buranowskije Babuschki sang in Udmurt when they...

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Zhúk zhuzhzhá

“Beetle buzzing.” Pushkin’s words for the sound made by a may bug, as remembered fondly by Russian-to-German translator Svetlana Geier in the documentary “The Woman with the 5 Elephants.” “Die Wirkung...

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Cockchafer

May bug, a large spring beetle that looks like a junebug but is cuter because of its eyebrows. This beetle is found in traditional children’s rhymes and stories and in a recipe for a soup popular in...

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The obstinacy of the enumeration

Umberto Eco’s phrase in a discussion about people who create open-ended lists for the sheer joy of them.

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Broasted

A way to cook delicious potatoes in William Gibson’s novel Spook Country. “If you knew enough Greek, she thought, you could assemble a word that meant divination via the pattern of grease left on a...

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Sass

Know, be aware of, meet, have sex with.

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Aja’ib

In Middle Eastern literature, aja’ib means marvels, wonders, astonishing things; “a genre that ranges from fantastic travel yarns to metaphysical myths,” according to Marina Warner’s book Stranger...

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Lottofee, Wetterfee

“Lottery fairy, weather fairy.” For decades, the attractive presenters who drew lottery numbers or read the weather report on German television were called “fairies.” The weather fairies have been...

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Ovni juridique

Objet volant non identifié juridique, a “legal UFO.” From Anne Michel’s reporting in Le Monde on what is legitimate and what is still not-illegal in the international banking sector.

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