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.”

Funkenzwangsvorstellung

Funkenzwang-svorstellung

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

Aftersome

rows of opaque and clear marbles

Querinous

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Wenbane

a person standing on a ledge looking at a city skyline

Future-Tense

a person looking at their reflection

Siso

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