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Word: Palimpsest

Usage: “All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.” — George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

Definition: A piece of paper, parchment, canvas or other manuscript that has been erased and overwritten, often still bearing traces of the original. From Ancient Greek for “scraped again.”

Word: Chinook

Usage: “Pa, is the Chinook blowing?” – Laura Ingalls, Little House on the Prairie

Definition: A tribe of Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest; a warm, wet wind, springing from the same region, named after said people.

Word: Prestidigitation

Usage: “I.B.M. scientists have received Nobel Prizes, performed molecular prestidigitation and won chess and ‘Jeopardy!’ games with pioneering examples of artificial intelligence.” – Edward Rothstein in his article “Data as Art, as Science, as a Reason for Being” in the New York Times

Definition: Sleight of hand, trickery employed by fingers; in French, legerdemain.

Word: FROW

Usage: “We’ve been hot on the heels of one Miss Perry as she’s dashed from FROW to FROW and now she’s popped up at Chanel working ladylike chic with her ice-cool coiff.” – The ever-dry Grazia Daily

Definition: In fashionland, FROW is an abbreviation of “Front Row,” which is obviously just one too many syllables.

Word: Fartist

Usage: “Artist or Fartist?” – @BruceLaBruce

Definition: An artist who emits work that stinks. (I feel gross.)

Word: Liketivism

Usage: “30 million views and counting? All in a day’s liketivism.” – me

Meaning: A less-hot version of “clicktivism,” which is the practice of promoting causes through social media.

You should know it because: Did you watch the Kony 2012 video this week?

Word: Élan vital Meaning: Vital impetus, or the current of evolution. Usage: “When I was just last in New York, I went for a walk, leaving Fifth Avenue and the Business section behind me, into the crowded streets near the Bowery. And while I was there, I had a sudden feeling of relief and confidence. […]

The post SNP’s word of the day: Élan vital appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

Word: Trollgaze

Meaning: A “genre” of music defined by its Tumblr success, Twitter divisiveness, and total inability to exist outside of the internet. Coined by Maura Johnson at The Village Voice. 

Usage: “A trollgaze track is utterly web-native: It’s not built to exist in a record shop, a TV channel, a collection, or even an mp3 playlist. Its natural habitat is the stream— that ceaseless flow of information we access every time we use social media. Trollgaze is something you see sandwiched between other status updates, tweets, or posts, fighting for attention with every other picture, stray thought, polemic, or advert. Its button-pushing crassness and ambiguous motives make it an evolutionary nightmare: music perfectly adapted for life in the stream.” Tom Ewing on Pitchfork, December 2011

Word: Workamper

Meaning: Nomadic jobseekers who cross America in mobile homes, picking up low-wage, no-guarantee work where they can get it.

Usage: “Amalgamated advertises positions on websites workampers frequent. In this warehouse alone, there are hundreds of them.” — Mac McClelland in “I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave”

Word: Awkscars

Meaning: The Oscars, now with 90 per cent more wtf-ness.

Usage: “More like the AWKSCARS. Everything is so f***ing awkward! I love it!” — a tweet by Aubrey Plaza, who awesomely goes by @evilhag.

Word: Nomophobia

Meaning: The fear of losing one’s mobile phone.

Usage: “If you know the panicked and disconnected feeling of leaving your mobile phone at home, you might be one of the many suffering from nomophobia.” — Mashable.com

Word: Intello-chic

Meaning: High-brow studies rendered stylish by design or by association.

Usage: “What distinguishes these 10 [literary journals] is that they’re not only intello-chic statements for your side table. They’re also really good reads.”  — The New York Times T Style Magazine