Eisce

Cover image for the Eisce word card on the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Eisce

n.
the awareness of the infinitesimal role you play in shaping your own society—knowing that whenever you smile at a stranger, pronounce a word a certain way, laugh at a certain joke, or choose the slightly shinier apple, you are unwittingly helping to construct the world in which you live—a role both vanishingly small but also somehow daunting, making it that much harder to complain about the traffic, knowing that you are traffic.

Irish eisceacht, exception. Pronounced “ahy-shuh.”

Manusia

Cover image for the Manusia word card on the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Nyctous

a person walking in the middle of a street

Poggled

a person studying a book with a magnifying glass

Wellium

Cover image for the Wellium word card on the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Nemotia

a city with clouds of smoke

Present-Tense

a close-up of a stopwatch