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.”

Furosha

a storm raging in the sky over a building

Ironsick

a group of random devices

Aoyaoia

a person holding a guitar

Fawtle

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

Wenbane

a person standing on a ledge looking at a city skyline

Amoransia

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