This morning I was introduced to the term Pronoia. It was described to me as the opposite of paranoia. Basically, it's when someone feels that the universe is conspiring to help them.
That's a mindset I wouldn't mind adopting.
So, what is your word? Share away!
I've been teaching a lot of young Italian groups recently, and while discussing the Irish slang-word beor (a semi-impolite term for an attractive woman), they taught me the Italian equivalent - gnocca. Che gnocca! = What a beor! That's "n'yocka" and "b'yore", respectively. I've never really seen 'beor' written. I've learnt a few useful bits and bobs from Italians recently - most notably shalla, apparently meaning something like "chill out".
"Esoteric." It's one of those words I've read a lot of times, but keep ignoring because I don't wanna bother. But I encountered it today while reading about pedagogy for a class on teaching writing, and decided it was time to just learn the damn word. Thanks, Google.
My girlfriend asked me if I knew what circumlocution meant from a book she was reading, we had to look it up. cir·cum·lo·cu·tion
ˌsərkəmˌləˈkyo͞oSH(ə)n/ ~ the use of many words where fewer would do, especially in a deliberate attempt to be vague or evasive.
"his admission came after years of circumlocution" synonyms: periphrasis, discursiveness, long-windedness, verbosity, verbiage, wordiness, prolixity, redundancy, pleonasm, tautology, repetitiveness, repetitiousness
"when you've finished your circumlocution, maybe you could just get to the point"
Muditā When we can be happy of the joys other beings feel, it is called muditā; the opposite word is envy or schadenfreude.Joy, especially sympathetic or vicarious joy. The pleasure that comes from delighting in other people's well-being.
Affadavit, a written statement under oath. OS X has this great feature where you can tap with three fingers on any word in any program and it'll look for a definition and / or a Wikipedia article on it. Extremely useful, especially for ESL people like me.
Wold and vole. cool little fairytale words. Archaic term for an area of woodland, and the other is a rodent. I ran into these because when you run them through an Atbash cipher, they spell themselves backwards. 'Wizard' does it too.
Acosmism: a world-denying belief system; "God" or the equivalent is the only reality and everything else is an illusion. Now I use it way too often and often allegorically (read: wrongly)
music using this feature is referred to as being "melismatic." It first shows up (in western music) in gregorian chant.