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.
View ArticleHypnerotomachia
Beautiful, arcane, inscrutable love story published in 1500 by Aldus Manutius.
View ArticleHypotyposis
Vivid, colorful description of scenes or events. Lively, can create the illusion of reality. Used in ekphrasis.
View ArticleNowrūz
“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.
View ArticleSaphoo
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.
View ArticleNormalien
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...
View ArticleFuxing
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...
View ArticleCisleithania, 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...
View ArticleNolars, 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...
View ArticleMast 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.
View Articleӝ, 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...
View ArticleZhúk 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...
View ArticleCockchafer
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...
View ArticleThe obstinacy of the enumeration
Umberto Eco’s phrase in a discussion about people who create open-ended lists for the sheer joy of them.
View ArticleBroasted
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...
View ArticleAja’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...
View ArticleLottofee, 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...
View ArticleOvni 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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