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.”

Offtides

close-up of a chromed metal object

Aoyaoia

a person holding a guitar

Punt Kick

Cover image for the Punt Kick word card on the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Yeorie

a woman with tendrils of smoke moving across her face

Present-Tense

a close-up of a stopwatch

The Giltwrights

Cover image for the The Giltwrights word card on the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows