Occhiolism

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

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.”

Walloway

water faucet that seems to emanate from the ground

Fawtle

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

Skidding

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

Backmasking

a woman's face with a double exposure

Echthesia

blurry image of two clocks

Fellchaser

a blurred shadow of a person in a dark room