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.”

Falesia

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

Solysium

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

Apolytus

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

Epistrix

several doors standing in a dark room

Zielschmerz

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

Emorries

a magnifying glass over photos and books