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.”

Fata Organa

Cover image for the Fata Organa word card on the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Blinkback

a wall full of pictures and objects

The Wends

Cover image for the The Wends word card on the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Ecury

a close-up of cave drawings and symbols

Lookaback

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

Backmasking

a woman's face with a double exposure