Viadne

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

Viadne

n.
alienation from the crude machinery of your own body—like riding a ramshackle parade float that’s run by gremlins you can’t see, who toil away in darkness, pulling strings to move your limbs, kneading your guts and working the bellows, trying to further your modern agenda using nothing more advanced than a sackful of bones and splanchnic ganglia, zapped by sparks in primordial ooze.

Latin via, by way of + viande, meat. Pronounced “vee-ad-nee.”

Trueholding

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

Inerrata

a hand holding a broken cup

Caucic

a close-up of a stone walking path

Scrough

a person working on the sidewalk

Poggled

a person studying a book with a magnifying glass

Thwit

close-up of a person with forehead wrinkled and holding their head