Tornomov

a cloudy sky and landscape

Tornomov

n.
the weird hollowness of trying to imagine the distant future—struggling to place it in any sort of context you’d find relatable but straining to believe it could feel all that different from the world around you.

A word that looks like tomorrow from a distance but is actually something else that you can’t really explain. Occasionally nuclear engineers try to work out how to warn future generations to stay away from radioactive waste sites, where it won’t be safe to dig for ten thousand years. There are many challenges: stainless steel signs will eventually rust away, etchings in granite will be buffed clean by sandstorms, huge menacing earthworks shrouded in vegetation. Any words or symbols we leave behind will surely have lost their meaning by then, the Gregorian calendar replaced five times over, erasing any sense of when AD 12000 was supposed to be. It makes you wonder: If it seems impossible to pass a message beyond our own little neighborhood in time, impossible even to warn our descendants not to dig into poisoned ground, what relationship do we have to them? Pronounced “tohr-noh-mawf.”

Adomania

a person riding a horse

Aponemia

a group of people standing together

Kadot

a person looking at an abstract spiral

Craxis

a tall house of cards

Hem-Jawed

an abstract image of someone touching their face

Nilous

a person standing at a bus terminal

Furosha

a storm raging in the sky over a building

Dystoria

close up of water drops on a window

Evertheless

a person floating in water

Starlorn

snow flakes in the dark

Tornomov

a cloudy sky and landscape

Ecsis

a hand holding a fossil

Grayshift

a spiral staircase from above

Karanoia

a neat stack of white paper

Winnewaw

a person wearing a party hat

Irrition

a close up of a dandelion

Ironsick

a group of random devices

Achenia

a close-up of a bottle with an organic object inside

Tillid

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

Keyframe

a large rock in the water with emanating ripples

Ludiosis

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

Winnewaw

a person wearing a party hat

O’Erpine

a person looking at a grave

Liberosis

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

Nemotia

a city with clouds of smoke

Mogging Folly

a person sitting on a bench

Aftergloom

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