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.”

La Gaudière

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

Adomania

a person riding a horse

Enterhood

adults with stern expressions holding a child

Present-Tense

a close-up of a stopwatch

Lisolia

a bookcase containing objects

Foreclearing

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