Monday, April 6, 2009

Pilkish

adj. Having the character of a mind pointing upward while the body is desperately trying to hold itself flat and firm to the ground.

“Those pilkish women one meets at church and by chance on the landscape of deliverance, who smooth outwardly from them their long dresses, their stretched desires and all before the accurately abstract altar in which their voice, free-floating into attempted speech, is allowed (and perhaps required) to disappear.” My Navel Within the Reach of Others. Susan Masses. 1957.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Fode

v. To create a look suggesting a permanently suspended judgment accurate in its import of infinite possibility.

n. A look which suggests the suspension of all judgment.

“Leaving the ocean behind him and with the soft, floating body of an amoeba with legs and eyes and arms, he walked toward the gathering, more and more permanent shore, leaving deep footprints in the sand as the waves for a while continued to wash over them and wash them supremely out and walked now with a look of fode on his face, as if he had just been fully washed by the waters from which he had been born from, again.” Where Anything Is Possible, an Account of My Return to the Sea. Littoral Reach. 1836.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Enantiomorph

n. (from Greek enantios, “opposite”; morphe, “form”), also called Antimer, or Optical Antipode, either of a pair of objects related to each other as the right hand is to the left, that is, as mirror images that cannot be reoriented so as to appear identical. An object that has a plane of symmetry cannot be an enantiomorph because the object and its mirror image are identical. Molecular enantiomorphs, such as those of lactic acid, have identical chemical properties, except in their chemical reaction with other dissymmetric molecules and with polarized light. Enantiomorphs are important to crystallography because many crystals are arrangements of alternate right- and left-handed forms of a single molecule. A complete description of the crystal specifies how the forms are mixed with each other.

note: this word appears a number of times in The Extended Words (as does mirror), and in some manner works as a root metaphor for the imaginary dictionary, playing as a reflection to our "real" dictionaries.

[Above definition from online Britannica dictionary]

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Floon

n. A polite leave taking with the suggestion that the people leaving one another will hope never to see each other again.

“The floon brought to mind the slowly elegant bowing waves, gracefully retreating from the shoreline, and the shoreline itself retreating, sliding from under itself, brought to mind the hesitant croaking of a single raven at the empty doorway of the still more empty voice, brought to mind a minutely perfected backwardness drawn out like a cape of felt, and the furry undertow of darkness brought to mind an orchestrated ballet that came from some other, perhaps more independent source, propelling them away, further and further away from one another, in a ritual of final, hopefully final good-byes.” The Many Pictures of Parting, Styles of the Floon in History. Care Eccles Sliding and Supreme Departure. 1900.

Friday, January 23, 2009

Flish

n. The sound made by tires on wet pavement.

“The flish of ceaseless traffic, stains peeled from the tarmac . . . .” Lapsed Time in the Hallway, Treasured Moments of Extended Indenture, Memoirs of a Terrorist in Transition. Barril Beacher Light. 1924.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Eflisin

n. Animal lullabies.

“The birds sing eflisin to their young and even to others of their kind, / but their songs are different songs than ours, formed in a softer air, / steep baskets woven with sonic care and rocked in softer bowers, / and bears and wolverines and foxes mold the air around them / with still other kinds of fur-dark blankets that surround them, / and crickets fill the temperatures of air with their own choices, / strike sharply splintered sounds within their very eflisin settled voices.” Animal Lullabies, an Incomplete Anthology. Fallings Reacher. 1866.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Dast

n. The fossilized dung of the Gambian Slowfloating Fourfolded Fingerfly (Repetitio fourfoldium), whose patterning was used, on reasonable occasions, in various ring settings and necklace jewelry in 15th century costume adornments from Isfahan, Iran and was then considered a mark of prescient distinction by the wearer, conferring on him an adroit invisibility without any forceful and intense need of acceptance.

“It was now the latest way to deny responsibility, in fact, to live and act in the world while remaining ‘pretentiously’ invisible, indeed, non-local; and everyone, yes, everyone was wearing it, dast and dast and more dast, streaks of invisibility everywhere through their imperfections only, yet only streaks, making crime an accidental patterning of discovery and the accidental detective useless.” Dast before the Fourfolded Fingerfly, a Biocultural Journey into the World of Flaming Facts and Their Non-Efficatious Effacements. Liquid Amber and the Glazings Brothers, Tom and Tracy. 1874.