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.”

Incidental Contact High

Cover image for the Incidental Contact High word card on the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Future-Tense

a person looking at their reflection

Aubadoir

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

Hem-Jawed

an abstract image of someone touching their face

Pithered

stacks of papers and folders piled high on a table

Elsewise

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