prosopolepsy (n.): Respect of persons; especially, a premature opinion or prejudice against a person, formed from his external appearance.

This definition comes straight out of Webster’s 1913 dictionary, and I’ll be the first to admit I’m not entirely sure what “respect of persons” means. The word comes from Greek, a combination of prosopon meaning “person” or “mask” (the likely ancestor of Latin persona and English person) and -lepsy, an Anglicized suffix derived from Greek lepsis and ultimately lambanein meaning “to take” or “to seize.” (Think epilepsy or catalepsy.) Some dude with a Comcast homepage suggests that “prosolepsy” has a sense indicating undue favor or partiality, but I don’t think that makes much sense — it’s certainly not in keeping with the word’s derivation.

The reason I bring this up is because I just discovered a brilliant new blog called Judge a Book by Its Cover, which features images of the worst book covers to pass through the public library system. The blog joins faithful standbys Comics Curmudgeon and Hot Chicks with Douchebags as indispensable elements of my blogroll, seen to the right. It occurs to me, having typed that sentence, that today’s word should really be “blogroll” rather than some Hellenic bullshit I just pulled out of my ass that no one will ever use, but, well, we’ve come this far already.