• ἀλήθεια or alētheia. truth, reality.
  • ἀνάκλισις or anáklisis. ‘to lean on’. of, relating to, or characterized by strong emotional dependence on another person, exemplified by the behaviour of an infant at the mother’s breast; choice of an object of libidinal attachment on the basis of a resemblance to early childhood protective and parental figures.
  • anodyne. not likely to provoke dissent or offense; inoffensive, often deliberately so. a painkilling drug or medicine.
  • ἀφάνισις or aphánisis. disappearance (of sexual desire); the fear of losing whatever it is that makes life ‘life’.
  • atavistic. relating to or characterized by reversion to something ancient or ancestral.
  • bildung. cultivation, refinement, education, culture; formation, creation.
  • catachresis. a misuse of a word; an application of a term to something which it does not properly denote. a misapplication or overextension of a figurative or analogical description; a wrongly applied metaphor or trope.
  • εἶδος or eîdos. form, image, shape.
  • emic. relating to or denoting an approach to the study or description of a particular language or culture in terms of its internal elements and their functioning rather than in terms of any existing external framework.
  • erkenntnis. knowledge, recognition, understanding; realization, insight, perception.
  • haptic. relating to the sense of touch, in particular relating to the perception and manipulation of objects using the senses of touch and proprioception.
  • heuristic. serving to indicate or point out; stimulating interest as a means of furthering investigation; encouraging a person to learn, discover, understand, or solve problems independently, as by experiment, evaluating possible answers or solutions, or by trial and error.
  • hex. a magic spell; a curse. cast a spell on; bewitch.
  • hypostasis. foundation, base; an underlying reality or substance, as opposed to attributes or to that which lacks substance.
  • indexical. relating to or denoting a word or expression whose meaning is dependent on the context in which it is used (such as here, you, me, that one there, or next tuesday); having or imparting a meaning, or signifying a referent, that changes according to context.
  • iota. a jot; a very small, insignificant quantity; the smallest amount of a thing; a bit, a whit.
  • καιρός or kairós. period (of time); season; proper time, opportunity; prime, the right moment, the fatal spot.
  • neoteric. belonging to a new fashion or trend; modern.
  • nisus. pressure, exertion; a mental or physical effort to attain a specific goal; a striving.
  • offal. the entrails and internal organs of an animal used as food; refuse or waste material; decomposing animal flesh.
  • ordure. dung, excrement; dirt, filth; something regarded as contaminating or perverting the morals; obscene material.
  • παράβασις or parábasis. the interruption of a discourse by a shift in the rhetorical register; the part of an ancient greek comedy in which the actors leave the stage and the chorus addresses the audience directly; transgression, breaking; a violation of law.
  • πόλεμος or pólemos. war, battle.
  • postlapsarian. pertaining to anything which follows a lapse or failure; the state of being which followed the fall (the expulsion of adam and eve from the garden of eden).
  • prosopopœia. the personification of an abstraction; a rhetorical device in which a non-human element speaks or is spoken to as a human.
  • protean. tending or able to change frequently or easily; able to do many different things; ever-changing, variable, versatile.
  • σκοτεινός or skoteinós. dark, obscure, dim.
  • sous rature. strategic philosophical device originally developed by heidegger. usually translated as ‘under erasure’, it involves the crossing out of a word within a text while allowing it to remain legible and in place. it indicates that a word is “inadequate yet necessary”; that a particular signifier is not wholly suitable for the concept it represents but must be used as the constraints of our language offer nothing better.
  • spaltung. division, splitting, scission.
  • sub rosa. ‘under the rose’. happening or done in secret; inscrutability, silence, secrecy, confidentiality.
  • τόπος or tópos (pl. topoi). place, location, locality. a literary theme or motif; a rhetorical convention or formula.
  • ulterior. existing beyond what is obvious or admitted; intentionally hidden. lying beneath or beyond what is revealed, evident, or supposed.
  • verdrängung. repression, suppression.
  • verneinung. negation, denial.
  • wissenschaft. science (a branch of knowledge or academic discipline dealing with a systematic body of facts or truths); the sciences taken as a whole; academia, scholarship (collective discipline of learning acquired through a scientific or scholarly method; totality of knowledge derived from scientific inquiry).
oct 21 2025 ∞
nov 30 2025 +