Halfway through Another Year: New Words

At the midway point of the past two years, I’ve opted to write a piece about the books I’ve read thus far. I thought about doing that, but wanted to switch it up a bit. I decided to keep a list of new words when I encounter them this year, and it follows at the end of this piece below. This list probably doesn’t include every new word that I’ve come across this year, but it definitely has a lot of them. It’s another piece of data that I thought might be interesting to track. Most of these, I think, were encountered while reading, particularly in reading Love’s Work by Gillian Rose, Anatheism by Richard Kearney, Phantastes by George MacDonald, and Democracy and Solidarity by James Davison Hunter. Others were encountered at museums or in conversations with pretentious friends (you know who you are). I have tried to attribute these words to the source where I discovered them, but started doing this about a month or so into when I decided to start writing down new words, so I’m missing most of them and/or misattributing them.

Love’s Work is a memoir from the late British philosopher Gillian Rose. Rose, who was a philosopher of Hegel, Kant, and Marx, also wrote on philosophy of religion, embodiment, and modernity. She died of ovarian cancer at 48, after it had spread to other organs, causing significant damage to various bodily functions. Love’s Work is written with these conditions informing Rose’s understanding of her life and its purpose. She begins by describing various friends and acquaintances and their relationships with their bodies and desire, including a philosopher who died alone and in poverty of AIDS in New York; an elderly woman who has married many times and had many affairs; a Catholic priest with whom Rose once had an affair. The book also explores Rose’s experiences growing up Jewish in postwar London, and ends with a philosophical discussion of revealed religion. I didn’t love Love’s Work but did find parts of it compelling, but most of it was extremely dense and over my head. That said, I expanded my vocabulary tenfold reading it.

Anatheism is a work of literary criticism and theology by philosopher and poet Richard Kearney, who currently teaches at Boston College. I really liked the thesis of this book, which argues that one ought to approach faith as welcoming in the stranger, drawing on various texts across Abrahamic religions that indicate that God is a stranger or outcast who is welcomed in. I thought that this was a helpful and beautiful way of thinking about faith. That said, I really disagreed with a lot of Kearney’s interpretations and ways he defended his theses. I felt he cherry-picked a lot of texts and gave incredibly narrow readings of them to make arguments that didn’t really hold up. Also, he has probably the worst reading of the Abraham-Isaac story ever.

Phantastes is by far the best of the books I’m discussing today. It follows Anodos, a young man, on his adventures through Fairyland, which often include falling in love with statues or women who are actually trolls in disguise, that kind of thing. It’s rambling and wonderful, and is sort of ground zero for all Western fantasy that came after. MacDonald was a huge influence on Tolkein and C.S. Lewis. It’s genuinely the best book I’ve read this year, and I’m not sure there are any close competitors.

Democracy and Solidarity is essentially an overview of American history, from founding to the present, with analysis of various figures and events that complicate the way Americans have (or haven’t) understand the nation as a singular whole that integrates others. Hunter spends a lot of time on the Civil War, which makes sense. I found one of his arguments really interesting: both the Union and the Confederacy consisted of primarily Protestants who, though they disagreed on slavery and whether there was Biblical justification for it, otherwise largely read Scripture similarly. Both sides argued that divine providence would lead to their success militarily. The carnage of the Civil War and fracturing of the polis, Hunter argues, led to the decline of public Christianity in America. It was not Darwinian science, but rather the interpretation of the events of the Civil War by both sides as a religious struggle, that furthered skepticism in religion. Mostly, this book didn’t say much I hadn’t encountered before, and I think that Hunter could (should) have spent more time discussing women’s suffrage and the ERA as other examples of the expansion of democracy.

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abstruse - adj., obscure; probably from Love’s Work, Rose

abyssal - adj., relating to the depths of the ocean; probably from Love’s Work, Rose

agonsim - n., a political theory emphasizing the potential positive effects of conflict; from Democracy and Solidarity, Hunter

alterity - n., otherness

anfractuosities - n., winding paths of the mind; from Love’s Work, Rose

antimony - n., the chemical element with the atomic number 51; in philosophy, a conflict between two mutually exclusive laws; from Democracy and Solidarity, Hunter

aplomb - n., self-assurance, especially in a difficult situation

atavistic - adj., relating to an ancient reversion; from Democracy and Solidarity, Hunter

baize - n., the green felt material used to cover pool and poker tables; from a museum

balustrade - n., a railing supported by balusters, which are decorative pillars, on a balcony or terrace; from the Met

bier - n., a movable frame on which a corpse or coffin are placed on to move before burial or cremation; from the Met

bilge - n., part of a ship’s hull; nonsense; a word that made me lose my Wordle streak; from the Wordle

calceolaria - n., a typically yellow or green flower; from Phantastes, George MacDonald

canagoge - ???? No idea. Can’t find out what this is. If you know what canagoge means let me know

cantillate - v., to chant

carapace - n., the hard upper shell of a crustacean, turtle, or arachnid

chapeau - n., a hat; from a museum

churl - n., a rude person

coruscate - v., to sparkle

crenellation - n., the battlement of a building or castle; from Phantastes, MacDonald

dight - adj., clothed; v., to prepare

doughty - adj., brave and persistent

durcharbeiten - n., German; the process of working through; in Freudian psychology, this means repeating/elaborating interpretations

ebullition - n., the action of boiling, as in heat or anger

environ - v., encircle

eparchy - n., a province of the Orthodox Church

execrate - v., denounce

faience - n., a kind of earthenware made in France between 1500 and 1700, from the Met

fallals - n., gaudy costume jewelry, from a museum

foison - v., to reap a rich harvest

frigate - n., a type of warship originating in the 17th century

furbelow - n., the border of a skirt or petticoat; from a museum

ganglionic - adj., relating to or affecting ganglia and ganglion cells, i.e. cells and tissues in the nervous system; from I think Democracy and Solidarity, Hunter

gestalt - n., a whole that is perceived as more than its parts; from a tweet

gobbet - n., a lump of food or flesh; from I think Phantastes, MacDonald

graft - n., British, hard work; from a tweet

halcyon - adj., Edenic; from Phantastes, MacDonald

hierophant - n., a person who draws other people to the sacred/to places deemed holy; the interpreter of sacred mysteries; from I think Love’s Work, Rose

hirsute - adj., hairy

holloa - n., a very loud speaking; a holler, a yell; from Phantastes, MacDonald

ignominy - n., public shame

ilex - n., another word for holly; from Phantastes, MacDonald

irenic - adj., aiming for peace; from a text from a friend

kenotic - adj., from the noun kenosis, meaning the self-emptying of Christ, an idea first developed by Lutheran theologian Gottfried Thomasius in his essay Christ’s Person and Work; from Anatheism, Kearney

kerygmas - n., proclamations; from Anatheism, Kearney

koji - n., a mold used in East Asian cooking to sweeten rice or used to ferment alcohol like sake or to make soy sauce and miso; from the menu at one of New Haven’s best cafes, Atticus

lambent - adj., gleaming softly

limerence - n., mental state of intense love and infatuation when the reciprocation is unknown or uncertain; from a conversation with a friend

lucre - n., money; from a column by New York Times writer Ross Douthat about the show Your Friends and Neighbors

lycra - n., Spandex

impecunious - adj., lacking money

malversation - n., corruption in a place of trust, e.g. a public official’s or pastor’s corruption

mellay - n., melee, quarrel

mendicant - adj., begging; n., a beggar

mien - n., a person’s look that indicates their mood; from a tweet

navvy - n., one employed in hard physical labor

neurasthenia - n., a 19th-century catchall for various, poorly-defined symptoms of fatigue

niello - n., a black mixture of metals and chemicals used to inlay engraved sketchings, esp. in silver; from the Met

obeisance - n., obedient respect; an expression of obedient respect, e.g. bowing or curtsying

obstreperous - adj., noisy and rambunctious

ouroboros - n., a symbol showing a snake swallowing itself, indicating an eternal cycle; from a friend

pannier - n., a bag hung from a horse or other beast of burden, or from a bike; from a museum

pappus - n., a part of a flower that plays a role in seed dispersal; from Phantastes, MacDonald

paroxysm - n., conniption, a sudden attack of violent expression of emotion

pasha - n., a high rank in the Ottoman Empire’s political and military systems; from a museum

perspicacity - n., shrewdness

pring - n., an imitation

privative - adj., marked by absence of something typically present

proviso - n., condition attached to an agreement

pulcritude - n., beauty; from a friend who is trying to learn new words

qualia - n., the internal and subjective component of sensory perception; from a groupchat

quay - n., a platform used for the unloading of ships

quotha - intj., indeed

Ralliement - n., a policy adopted by some French Catholics to support the French Third Republic after an encyclical published by Pope Leo XIII in 1892

ressentiment - n., in philosophy, a psychological state caused by suppressed envy; developed as an idea by Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals, ressentiment is critical in his “master-slave” relationship; from Democracy and Solidarity, Hunter

sarsaparilla - n., a plant used to treat arthritis; the name of a drink made from aforementioned plant that is similar to root beer; from a tweet

scamorza - n., a type of Italian cheese; from the menu at one of New Haven’s best cafes, Atticus

sere - adj., withered

solarium - n., a sunroom; from a friend

solecism - n., a grammatical mistake; a mistake in manners

somnambulist - n., sleepwalker

stook - n., sheaves gathered in a field

strumpet - n., a female prostitute

supercilious - adj., pretentious, snobbish, arrogant; from a friend trying to learn new words

topiary - n., the practice of trimming hedges, trees, and bushes into shapes; from a friend, who remarked on topiary after we walked past some very cool shaped bushes

trine - adj., threefold; also the name of a university in northeast Indiana

umbrageous - adj., filled with shade; from Phantastes, MacDonald

unum - n., inflected form of unus, meaning “one”, as in E pluribus unum, “out of many, one,” the motto of the United States; from Democracy and Solidarity, Hunter

verst - n., a Russian measure of length approximate to 0.66 mile/1.06 kilometers

votary - n., one who makes vows to religious service, e.g. a monk or nun