Promethean (n.): of, relating to, or resembling Prometheus, his experiences or his art, esp.: daringly original or creative When I was a wee lad nursing at the teat of cable television, Nickelodeon aired a program called Kablam! which was a weekly set of recurring short cartoons. Most of these cartoons, like Action League Now! and [...]
outtro (n.): the end portion of a song “Outtro” is a neologism in widespread use among rock musicians as the opposite of “intro.” I’m pretty sure it’s denigrated among serious musicians, who prefer fancy-pants terms like “coda” and “fine” (pronounced fee-NAY, per the Italian), but it serves a different and specific purpose. A coda is [...]
metonymy (n.): a figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated (as “crown” in “lands belonging to the crown”) The inimitable Martin M. introduced me to this word a couple of years back. It’s [...]
contrapositive (n.): a proposition or theorem formed by contradicting both the subject and predicate or both the hypothesis and conclusion of a given proposition or theorem and interchanging them (i.e., “if not-B then not-A” is the contrapositive of “if A then B”) The contrapositive is an element of formal logic. My knowledge of formal logic [...]
veisalgia (n.): hangover This word is from the Norwegian kveis, meaning “uneasiness following debauchery,” and the Greek algia, meaning pain. I hate this word.
colostrum (n.): milk secreted for a few days after parturition and characterized by high protein and antibody content This word came up in a roundabout way following a discussion with confirmed bestie and fellow Hold the Waffle-er Liz about epilepsy or something. I mentioned that one extreme treatment for the prevention of seizures is to [...]
herein (adv.): in this There’s a peculiar class of words in English that combine shorter adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions into longer ones. They may be most often found in legal jargon, but they’re used in a fair amount of logical or self-referential writing, though rarely in speech. They range from the simple and common (“whereas”) [...]
zeitgeist (n.): the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era Zeitgeist is a word I use abundantly, most frequently in the phrase “Get your head in the zeitgeist!” This is because it’s an awesome word. It’s one of that precious handful of German words that have been imported into English wholesale to describe [...]
