Occhiolism

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Occhiolism

n.
the awareness of how fundamentally limited your senses are—noticing how little of your field of vision is ever in focus, how few colors you’re able to see, how few sounds you’re able to hear, and how intrusively your brain fills in the blanks with its own cartoonish extrapolations—which makes you wish you could experience the whole of reality instead of only evercatching a tiny glimpse of it, to just once step back from the keyhole and finally open the door.

Italian occhiolino (“little eye”), the original name that Galileo gave to the microscope in 1609. Pronounced “oh-kyoh-liz-uhm.”

The Unsharp Mask

a mirror with a reflection of a person

Ellipsism

a hand clawing at a wall

La Cuna

Cover image for the La Cuna word card on the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Mauerbauertraurigkeit

Mauerbauer-traurigkeit

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Etherness

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

Evertheless

a person floating in water