Kinchy

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

Kinchy

adj.
feeling guilty that you care about your own petty concerns more deeply than faraway cataclysms—that a family spat hurts more than a civil war, that a three-day fever hits you harder than climate change.

Japanese 近視 (kinshi), near-sightedness. A word just shy of kinship. Pronounced “kin-chee.”

Kerisl

piles of old books scattered in an abandoned room

Alpha Exposure

a close-up of a baby with diffusion filter

Skidding

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

Anticious

a group of men in hats looking at elevated signage

Zysia

a kite soaring above an empty landscape

Gobo

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