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.”

Lookaback

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

Aoyaoia

a person holding a guitar

Keir

a snowy landscape with trees and a fence

Volander

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

The Unsharp Mask

a mirror with a reflection of a person

Aftersome

rows of opaque and clear marbles