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.”

Emorries

a magnifying glass over photos and books

Anti-Aliasing

Cover image for the Anti-Aliasing word card on the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Craxis

a tall house of cards

Ghough

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

Epistrix

several doors standing in a dark room

Deep Gut

Cover image for the Deep Gut word card on the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows