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.”

Aimonomia

close-up of a plant with lights glowing in background

Wollah

a person with shapes raining on them

Anechosis

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

Nullness

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

Archimony

a person looking at broken furniture

Chrysalism

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