FASHION Magazine

Word: Rookie

Meaning: In sports, it’s a player in his or her first year. In other fields, it’s any kind of novice, often a jejune one.

Usage: “My rookie year, I was very immature.” — Dennis Rodman, basketball player, fashion icon, and master of the understatement.

Word: Provocateuse

Meaning: A female provocateur. What’s a provocateur? Oh, come on. It’s someone who provokes, who engenders controversy for controversy’s sake.

Usage: “Carine Roitfeld: Agent Provocateuse.” — Style.com

Word: Ostalgie

Meaning: A hybrid term derived from “Ost” (German for east) and “Nostalgie” (duh), meant to describe a nostalgic and/or ironic love of Old East German ways of life

Usage: “Ostalgie is not for the totalitarian government but for the clarity that emerges from the knowledge that great minds risked the gulag, the madhouse, the blindfold, and the rifle with every act of artistic creation.” —Paris Review

Word: Apocalypticism

Meaning: A belief—religious or secular—that the apocalypse is coming, or, more germanely, a belief that the apocalypse is coming in our time.

Usage: Paraphrasing Ferris Bueller: “I don’t believe in apocalypticism, or any -ism for that matter.”

Word: Weddingitis

Meaning: According to the inestimable Urban Dictionary, it’s an “ailment from attending too many weddings or the byproduct of having too many friends become engaged when you are still single. Side effects include outbursts of “AWWWWWW!!” and deep sighs. Lately, this -itis has become a far greater threat: studies show you can catch it even from people you don’t know, and a rash of celebrity weddings, spreading virally, has everyone in danger.

Word: Vulgarity

Meaning: An act or expression that defies good taste.

Word: Reliquary

Meaning: A shrine filled with, well, relics.

Word: Micrography

Meaning: Literally, “small writing.” Historically, a Jewish form of calligraphy that developed in the ninth century. Currently, a similar—but not so much religious—way of using tiny, tiny text to render large-scale art, often used by bored graphic designers.

Word: Dandy(ism)

Meaning: A dandy’s a man overcommitted to leisure, refinement, and, above all, aesthetics; dandyism is the seemingly effortless pursuit of (outward, at least) superiority.

Word: Malaisey

Meaning: “Malaise” comes from the French mal (bad) and aise (ease, roughly), thus meaning “ill at ease.” “Malaisey,” though, takes those unspecific feelings of illness and uneasiness and adds a lazy unwillingness to actually do anything about them.

Word: Pastoral

Meaning: Adjective referring to a) the slow, farm-style life and b) more commonly, now, to the idyllic/idealized way such a life is represented—in art, novels, music, etcetera—to hard-bitten city peeps.

Word: Polymath

Meaning: A person whose knowledge and skills span numerous of subject areas. In more common terms, a Renaissance man or woman.