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.”

Mimeomia

a person wearing an animal onesie garment

Allope

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

Hailbound

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

Anti-Aliasing

Cover image for the Anti-Aliasing word card on the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Merrenness

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

Lisolia

a bookcase containing objects