words
Date: January 2, 1999
Categories: notes and errata
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- laconic: to speak using very few words.
- over-egged: overly embellished or exaggerated
- enshittification: online platforms lowering their quality often by adding advertisements
- moffenhoer – word for Dutch women who slept with nazis and had their heads shaved
- halation – a halo shaped exposure pattern around light sources seen on chemical film at low speed.
- isomorphism = a mapping between two structures of the same type that can be reversed by an inverse mapping.
- sardonic – grimly mocking or critical.
- unrelement = an atom in set theory
- Grothendieck Universe = (in theory) a set in which all of mathematics can be performed
- coprolite = fossilised feces
- sympatico = understanding connection
- thanatos = the personification of death
- effete homosexual = effeminate gay man
- quotidian = everyday, or routine
- intransigence = unwillingness to change ones views or to agree
- Froebel Method – a method of education based on learning through hands on activity, play, and assuming “occupations”
- Usonia = old term for the United States of America
- confabulation = the creation of false memories, narratives, or explanations without the intention to deceive.
- Cannulated = tubular, to allow something else to pass through (normally a wire).
- Brocken spectre = magnified (and apparently enormous) shadow of an observer cast in mid air upon any type of cloud opposite a strong light source. The figure’s head can be surrounded by a bright area called Heiligenschein, or halo-like rings of rainbow-coloured light forming a glory, which appear opposite the Sun’s direction when uniformly sized water droplets in clouds refract and backscatter sunlight.
- augur: to portend a good or bad outcome
- ossified: having turned into bone or boney tissue
- Luther Blisset: a psyeudonom used by creatives around the world for books and music
- Wu Ming: Chinese for no-name.
- deuteragonist: second in importance to the protagonist.
- Akousmatikoi: ‘extremely hard-core Pythagoreans’. They clung onto his every word, as if it was divine dogma. I believe that they didn’t agree with the other type of practitioners trying to further the study of mathematics or science from Pythagoras’ findings. This was as the Akousmatikoi believed it not to be their leader’s original intent. They also refused to accept any philosophic evolution and reinterpretation of Pythagoras’ work or sayings. They practised Silence, wearing simple clothes and avoiding meat.
- Transport Cafe: traditional cafe On the motorways of Britain, with an association with motorcycle culture.
- Sinistral: left-handed and left sided.
- Liebestod: Love-death, a theatrical device meaning erotic death.
- Portmanteau: a made-up word combining two others e.g. motel
- aphorism: a useful saying
- sic: indicating a direct quote
- assegai: a xhosa throwing spear.
- ensconse: to settle yourself in a comfortable, safe or secret place.
- metronymy: where a related word is used in place of something it is related to – e.g. oval office for US Presidency
- metalepsis: crossovers between narrative levels.
- kreuzweg: German for Way of the Cross as well as crossroads.
- convive: a fellow drinker or diner at a table, from convivial.
- lepidopterist or, archaically, an aurelian: someone who studies moths.
- sephulchral: suggesting death or places where the dead are buried.
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