Glossary

I like words quite a bit, as if you couldn’t tell from me having this site and all. I especially like obscure, obtuse, abandoned words. Words that are too specific or odd to be commonly used (or known). I sort of collect them, you might say. These are my favorites:

Academic

A Scholar that you disagree with.

Acta Erudituorum

Published from 1682 to 1731, the Latin Acta Eruditorum, published in Leipzig, was one of the most important international journals. The periodical was founded by Professor Otto Mencke (1644-1707) and continued by J.B. Mencke, then by F.O. Mencke, and finally by Professor K.A. Bel.

Administrivia

The chores associated with maintaining an Internet account, server, mail list, or other resource. Depending on the context and the speaker, it can imply boring but still necessary tasks or seemingly unnecessary and time-consuming burdens.

Apophenia

The sponateous perception of connections and meaningfulness in unrelated things.

Babel Whore

A person who intersperses their anecdotes with phrases from another language, though he or she doesn’t speak that language. E.g., ‘Mike and I saw the new Woody Allen movie, which was, you know, comme ci, comme ça…’

Book Mentality

A person that automatically assumes that all content, no matter what media it is published in, should remain static and unchanged, and revisions should occupy a seperate edition, clearly marked as such could be said to have a Book Mentality.

Beyond The Pale

Originally, the things that went on outside of the medieval dominions of the English in Ireland. It came to be understood as irrevocably unacceptable or unreasonable: behavior that was quite beyond the pale. We define Beyond The Pale to be all of those things that are not immediately part of ourselves or our home, such as work, other people, etc.

Continuous Partial Attention

Linda Stone, formerly of Apple and Microsoft, has coined the term “continuous partial attention” to describe life in the era of e-mail, instant messaging, cellphones, and other distractions. We have co-opted her definition somewhat to apply it directly to this website.

Crappacino

Any of the 10,000 varieties of ‘capuccino’ one can purchase in a disposable cup from a vending machine in a gas station.

Desiderata

Something considered necessary or highly desirable, alternately, a list of those desired things; the singular being desideratum, the plural, desiderata. From neuter past participle of Desiderare; to desire. “The point is not that the artist has ‘penetrated the character’ of his sitter, that commonplace desideratum of portraiture” (Robert Hughes).

Enthymeme

An enthymeme is a partial syllogism with one of the premises unstated. We like to call it a rhetorical syllogism. It’s a good word to slip into conversation during parties. People will think you’re smart. Or pretentious. Or both.
Example: “We cannot trust this man, for he has perjured himself in the past.” In this enthymeme, the major premise of the complete syllogism is missing:

• Those who perjure themselves cannot be trusted. (Major premise – omitted)
• This man has perjured himself in the past. (Minor premise – stated)
• This man is not to be trusted. (Conclusion – stated)

GOSPLAC

Graduate Of (a) Small Private Liberal Arts College

Hikikomori

The state, or the people in the state, of social withdrawal. Pathological Anthropophobia.

Hypergraphia

The driving compulsion to write; the overwhelming urge to write. Hypergraphia may compel someone to keep a voluminous journal, to jot off frequent letters to the editor, to write on toilet paper if nothing else is available, and perhaps even to compile a dictionary. Hypergraphia is the opposite of writer’s block.

Identity Politics

The laden phrase “identity politics” has come to signify a wide range of political activity and theorizing founded in the shared experiences of injustice of members of certain social groups. Rather than organizing solely around ideology or party affiliation, identity politics typically concerns the liberation of a specific constituency marginalized within its larger context. Members of that constituency assert or reclaim ways of understanding their distinctiveness that challenge dominant oppressive characterizations, with the goal of greater self-determination. For more, see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, from which this definition was taken.

Intranet

A privately maintained computer network that can be accessed only by authorized persons, especially members or employees of the organization that owns it.

Kapnismology

The Pursuit of the Art and Business of Smoking.

Kratophilia

The love of power.

Loglo

The collective light emanating from the signs of a franchise ghetto.

MOΛΩN ΛABÉ

The Spartan General Leonidas was charged with guarding a mountain pass with just 300 men to delay the invading million man Persian army. When the Persian leade Xerxes offered to spare his men if they gave up their arms, Leonidas replied “MOΛΩN ΛABÉ”, or “Come and get them.” Pronounced in English as ‘Molon Lave’ or ‘Molon Labe’.

Philodoxer

The lover of opinion (as opposed to truth) that mocked Socrates and finally murdered him.

Philosophes

Any of the leading philosophical, political, and social writers of the 18th-century French Enlightenment.

Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum

A maxim often paraphrased as “Si vis pacem, para bellum.” The eminently reasonable philosophy that ,”If you would have peace, prepare for war.” The English version is often back-rendered as “Si vis pacem, para bellum.” This sentiment is attributed to Flavius Vegetius Renatus, who wrote in the “De re militari” (390 B.C.E.): “Qui desiderat pacem, bellum praeparat; nemo provocare ne offendere audet quem intelliget superiorem esse pugnaturem”. (Whosoever desires peace prepares for war; no one provokes, nor dares to offend, those who they know to be superior in battle.)

SDA

Senseless Desire to Acquire. An affliction effecting the vast majority of people in the developed Western world. It is characterized by a distinct inability to differentiate between the things one wants and the things one needs.

Scholar

An Academic that you agree with.

Scire ubi aliquid invenire possis, ea demum maxima pars eruditionis est.

To know where you can find anything, that in short is the largest part of learning.

Slackdotter

One who reads SlashDot at work instead of doing anything productive.

Social Software

Social software is based on supporting the desire of individuals to affiliate, their desire to be pulled into groups to achieve their personal goals.

Southron

1) Often Southron. A person who lives in the south, especially an Englishman as called by a Scotsman. 2) A native or inhabitant of the American South. Used by the Confederates in the Civil War.[Etymology: Middle English, variant of southerne, southern.]

Stuff

The very word conveyed a feeling of bloatedness: to be overstuffed; uncomfortably full; overburdened with superfluous objects. This is Stuff in the abstract; unspecified objects which you’re as yet unaware that you need.

SUV

Suburban Uniformity Vehicle. The Station-Wagon-On-A-Truck-Chassis that is all the rage with aspirational minded suburbanites who think that cheap ladder-frame trucks with solid rear axles and the aerodynamics of a shipping container are some sort of status symbol, and an appropriate conveyance for around town driving.

TEOTWAWKI

The End Of The World As We Know It. An Acronym (pronounced Tee-Oh- Twack-E) much used amongst those concerned that various political, social or environmental events are about to bring about TEOTWAWKI. Amusingly, this is also the modern spelling of Teothuauci, a Nahuatl word that can be roughly translated as “the end of Creation as observed”, is a great calamity or disater at the end of each “sun” or age in the Aztec creation myth. According to the mythology of the Aztec religion, the world has been created many times before and each creation or “sun” (age) ended in a great calamity, a Teothuauci. The Aztecs believed that at the end of each age, the god Cateclixmicli would would wake up from his trance on the icy mountain, Cail’atza and cause great destruction and calamity, which would lead to a new age of creation.

The Pale

Originally, the medieval dominions of the English in Ireland. Our usage is derived from A region or district lying within an imposed boundary or constituting a separate jurisdiction. We define that boundary to be our persons and our home. Therefore, our personal lives exist within and constitute The Pale.

Thug-muffin

A child wearing a North Face puffa jacket, carpenter jeans, and Timberlands

Twenty-somethings

People who, when it’s time to pay for dinner, have nothing smaller than a twenty-dollar bill.