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.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Haxtrial

adj. Referring to the class of all words deemed unrhymeable, such as orange and purple and, perhaps, bulb, and others still waiting to be uncovered.

“Haxtrial maneuvers are cut short in such languages as Chinese or Vietnamese since it is almost impossible to imagine a deadening of such musical connection.” Words without Sound, Haxtrial Maneuvers in the Mid-17th Century Inverted Ballads of Summerset and Their Influence on the Rise of Particulate Meaning and the Decay of Language Occasioned by the Poetry of the So-Called Enlightenment. Roger Dodger and Tour More de More. 1951.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Brakskreeb

n. The selling of part of one’s own body for profit.

“The brakskreeb was fierce, for the mortgage had to be paid, the children fed, and the medicine provided, though, fortunately, he had one more kidney to live on.” Cancelling the Body Out of Debt. Partsa Live. 1996.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Becreton

n. Geology. A “near granite” that rings with absolute overtone clarity at a frequency of 312 cycles per second under standard barometric conditions when struck by copper, iron, or “amalgamated” bronze “reflector winds” and whose type section (geologist’s term for an almost perfectly clear lithic classified type or example or “find-fitting”) has been located 3.06164 miles south southwest southeast of Best Maine Station, Arizona.

“The several micro near granites, or true becretons placed there by earth forces that had, in the undertones of their existences hundreds of millions of years ago a passionate purpose, it has been more than clearly and beyond any doubt established, have been, now, with intense purpose, played on, for the tunings and outward wave poolings of their structures (four foot diameter platforms resembling miraculously ‘risen plates’ or tonal toadstools) have hyper-musical possibilities, that is, pulsed potentials, which we have only recently begun to explore and, through exploration, inhabit.” Compositions Newly Inscribed on the Air of Those Regions by the Microbecretons of Copper Canyon, Utah, The ‘Flails’ of Prince Edward Island, and the ‘Passionate Pilgrims’ of Patagonia. Recorded by Rodolfo Honda and Rebecca Fleece Rollings [Expanding Soundspaces, Inc.]. 1997.

Friday, January 16, 2009

Obtudinarian

n. Someone of advanced age, who has grown old, moving against the grain — socially, psychologically, politically, etc.

“The obtudinarian of the year award was given to R. Fallweather Snooze, whose life has been spent as, well, a kind of Robin Hood confidence man, returning what he had so skillfully gotten from others and given back with such panache, flavor, and fullness that the law or, in most cases, the ‘injured’ party, had, on all occasions, been asked to ‘forgive the forgiver’ or ‘reclaim the reclaimer,’ in a word, to receive as a gift an often large part of the overflow of his illegal gaining (robbery, of course), which he had, in such stylistic bravado, so graciously returned, since, it is known to many, our obtudinarian of the year has, from the beginning of his so fanciful a career in florid and flavorful deception, it must be said, never taken a penny, a nickel, a dollar, a sawbuck, a greenback, a CD, and investment portfolio that he has not returned, and returned, in deed, with interest, as if he were the manager of a massive trust fund, and I mean ‘returned with interest,’ ladies and gentlemen, in both senses of the word.” Obtudinarians of Note, a Classified Clearbook of the Last One Hundred Years on Which Records Have Been Kept of These Celebrated Personages, Correlating, Clarifying, Criticizing, Commending, and Commenting on the Value and Variability of Such Cases. Dissy Grace Molar. 1938.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Goigrium

n. A plant of the halifax family, sub-branch Euthanasia fallitropus, found in the mythological flora of suicides (c. 1229), there symbolizing death by superconscious, though conspicuous, means, but containing a powerful, pulsing pustule, allowing the entire plant — roots, leaves, stem, and aura — when in its mature state, to become (but only in some universally detached disguise as it went wandering) a great variety (a whole flora) of other shrubs of wholly different genealogies, histories, and characteristics, allowing, therefore, a survival through disguise and therefore beyond disguise.

“The goigrium in her garden resembled poison ivy to the touch, rosebuds to the smell, passion fruit to the unwary, and mango nectar to the unconscious.” Fuguing and Exploration in the Dangerously Delightful World of the Almost Universal Plant and Its Perhaps Near Appendage, the Fungus: Theatrical Disguises, Pulses of Mithridates, Sweeteners from the Isles of the Blest, and Other Fanciful and Magical Devices. Roger Pleadie Kale and Bruce Crankshaft. 1701.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Creech

n. A fellowship of banter, criticism, and complaint.

“The creech you would join, if you could find one to your liking (and it is possible now that you could), would consist, in main, of hard-joking men and women (perhaps a dozen or so — no children, they seem to have their own groups), deep, angry complaints with a fist full of words pointed at the sky, a top-rippling and rip roaring, constant conversation that touched on and bounced off and merged with multiple angularities and ambiguous areas of truly tense, metaphoric mischief, and, as a kind of bound (not bounded) atmospheric glue to hold it all together (piecemeal, of course), a deep rustling of unaligned histories to act as a richly grounded bass for the clues to all these whizzing interactions.” The Creech in Humanity, a Study of Convergences and their Widely Purposeful Interpenetrations. Casey Restless, Root Rumor, and Marion Thrice. 1886.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Stice

n. A semi-sweet, slightly sour and peppery fruit, squarish and measuring on average twenty centimeters in length, green to orange to yellow (depending on the season) with a smell akin to “modified” tangerines, and having a stipply, rigorous skin interspersed with white stars (reverse pores), becoming ripe in mid-April to early May and grown commercially in and around Nagercoil in the Cape Comorin area on the extreme southern tip of the Indic Peninsula.

“The price for a slice of stice on ice is nice.” Folk saying, c. 1965, Southern India. Author unknown.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Droon

v. To greet someone considered hostile or interact with a person (or persons) toward whom one has mutual hostile intentions, or to greet someone with whom one is not on a variety of very good terms by using a single suggestion or a series of suggestions offered in various publications readily available.

“ ‘Do not think that we can droon all day,’ I said to Mr. Balding Tartface as he all but stepped into my footprints and barred my way on the street, carrying a box of ‘Fortunate’ Chocolates (which, fortunately, he did not offer me), ‘for the sun,’ I continued, ‘is too bright to ignore the feasts which await the both of us as we wander through this truly amazing maze.’ ” Dying for Your Enemies, a Do It Yourself Manual. Laurence A. Masters Cloudless. 1902.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Belkit

n. A tape that sticks to the air. Used for attaching or holding information called up from one’s “early” past and being more and more capable of suspension for not more than one solar day (and sometimes for only a few sunlit hours) since the adhesive “melts” at sunset or on exposure to our daily descending dip into darkness.

“Someone imagined that when the belkit fell, the air fell, almost soundlessly, with it.” The Belkit Phenomenon. Heavy Hairy Underworn and Colonel Solids Jaspers. 2002.

Friday, January 9, 2009

Mestimic

adj. Of the character and texture of velvet.

“The meteor left a silent streak, a finger drawn across the window of the atmosphere, as it fell silently through the mestimic ear of the night.” I Hear the Universe Applauding Itself. Ralph Lepshard. 1969.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Yal

n. A universal experience that everyone has, at rare moments of clarity, that everything is waving at him and, at rarer moments, that everything is, simultaneously, waving to something beyond him.

“Just a touch of recognition the yal has given me, but, certainly, that touch has been enough.” My Experiences of Being Overwhelmed. Gregory Batesmanship. 1861.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Elenebar

n. The fifth forgotten enantiomorph, an element in the present metallic series of the Neo-Mendeleoffean periodic table, after cinnabar, (with a negative atomic number of - 85 and negative atomic weight of -186) and which has the property of being able to combine with any of the other free radicals outside of its metallic bond and is used mainly as mental armor, since it binds freely with negative germanium and other negative metallic elements.

“The exact location of the elenebar could not be precisely determined because it had significantly merged with the unending hills of the Welsh mythological landscape and had to be ‘called into being’ through the sound of drills in the ancient rocks.” Mining for Pleasure. Dyland Llandsaft. 1802.

Llandsaft, Dyland (1986–1989). As the Welsh precursor of Mendeleev and classifier of the mythological elements in the landscape of Wales, Llandsaft, independently wealthy and immensely curious, roamed the Welsh countryside collecting specimens of rocks, which he claimed were “older than the earth” and “belonged” to the mythical kingdom of Wales “before time had been born.” An element such as Suppurifium, which has a negative atomic weight of 15, exists, says Llandsaft, in an enantiomorphic relationship with Phosphorus (atomic weight +15) and is termed by Llandsaft as the “ghost of phosphorus,” providing the necessary chemical support needed by this “visible” element. In fact, each mythological element within Llandsaft’s periodic table contains its corresponding positive element. When a new element is found, radium, for example, another negative element within the Welsh mythological landscape has also been found or must also be found, so he had postulated. When a new element is “created,” for example, within the cloud chamber of particle accelerators, Californium, for example, at that instant, theory predicts, a corresponding mythological element is also created. However, unlike protons and anti-protons, neutrons and anti-neutrons, leptons and anti-leptons, etc., real and mythological elements cannot and will not annihilate each other on contact, though there has, to date, been no contact between the two sets of elements. But, as would be expected, experiments are under way to create a “meeting of particle alignments,” a conference chaired by the two minds of the participants. Then, we may have some idea of whether or not Llandsaft’s mythological alignment may “shadow support” or undermine or “fashion forth” the so-called “negative Mendelevium” structures.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Maybeitics

n. Dullness reduced to profound insignificance, as opposed to common trivia, which is immediately irreducible to its proper non-transcendence.

“Maybeitics was employed to rouse the awakened dreamers into the steeper slopes of sleep.” Half Way There and Still Falling, an Account of My Profound Insignificance and Its Over and Over Echoing Backwash and Aftermath. Walter Loosenings and Gail Glassover. 1941.

Monday, January 5, 2009

Wangeroot

n. The sound of five hundred blackbirds rising from a wheatfield in Kansas or any wheatfield near Kansas.

“The ecstasy of having feasted and the wangeroot of their black tornado blur, a whirr that stirred the cowering crickets from their active trance and into the dance of pure, empowering safety, miming in motion their core of complex relief. . . .” Some Mathematical Configurations of Flocks. Stem Tighter Shape. 1968.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Zoop

v. To decorate the imagination with gems from the real world.

“They would not even zoop the world they made / For decorated worlds are meant to fade.” The Hard Times of the Rich, Their Tribulations and Deeper Dilemmas, a Poem in Gaily Packaged Four-Line Stanzas. Millard Chance and Peachum O’Reachum. 1985.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Fictoral

adj. Fickle, to the point of involuntary involution, when faced with the recognition of any object’s identity or when creating identity for any object.

“Fictoral fruit was her passion, though you would be hard put to get her to distinguish a peach from a mango.” Vast Identities from the Headwaters of the Optic Nerve. Robert Craft Singworthy. 1978.

Friday, January 2, 2009

Tushion

n. A flattened, sub-atomic particle containing spin laterally but not circumferentially and having the further ability to change the “spin” of other, dissimilar particles to create wobble in anti-mesons, quarks, and neutrinos, but not in pi-mesons or in so-called “filtered” mesons or in macro-sidereal aleph ephshuts (spuds), and possessing a periodic radial and bilateral “fulmination” within its life history (2.3-23 seconds).

“The tushion falling off the cliff head and never hitting the bottom, never breaking; the only things imagined are the cliff head, the bottom, and the falling — the rest is real: the tushion within its imaginative matrix.” The Continuous Veil in the Aura of Belief, a Study in Sub-Atomic Physics for the Poet-Adventurer and Co-creative Logician. Frederic Lightlifter and Morton Darkenson. 1986.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Saffron

v. "To saffron" is now rare usage but was once used to denote the color yellow applied to something or to dye with saffron, in a figurative sense. • "And in Latyn I speke a wordes fewe, To saffron with my predicacion." (i.e., he will season his public utterings with Latin) The Pardoner's Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer. • "In the saffroned bridesails scenting all the seas" which is the last line of the poem 'The Second Voyage' by Rudyard Kipling, from the collection The Five Nations.

This definition is adapted from a footnote in The Poison Tree: Selected Writings of Rumphius on the Natural History of the Indies, edited and translated by E. M. Beekman. From here it's not so far to the imagined dictionary, the extended words and their definitions, that Sid Gershgoren has gathered.