FASHION Magazine

Word: Modelland

Usage: “Suddenly, Scouts from Modelland were everywhere. An asteroid rocketed to earth, throwing up chunks of marble all around the square and causing nearby runway walkers to flee in hysterics. A stunning Scout emerged from the rubble, with skin that seemed to be made of rough stone.”

Word: Mole

Usage: “Mole! Bloody mole! We’re not supposed to talk about the bloody mole, but there’s a bloody mole winking me in the face!” —Austin Powers

Word: Gerontophilia

Meaning: A sexual preference toward the elderly.

Word: Epicene

Meaning: Either lacking in distinctive male or female characteristics or possessing both male and female characteristics. More often used for effeminate males (sissy boys) than for masculine females (tomboys or what-have-you), so we’ll go with that.

Word: Marginalia

Meaning: Scribbles or doodles in the margins of printed matter—although the definition given by writer Katrina Onstad below, which more loosely implies extraneous surface detail in other art forms, is interesting too.

Word: Celebutot

Meaning: Taken from the older English portmanteau “celebutante,” this refers to a child who is famous for having famous parents and, as a result, a lot of stupendously expensive stuff.

Word: Pneumatic

Meaning: Technically, it means filled with air, usually compressed air, like the tubes running throughout George Orwell‘s 1984. But Huxley used it relentlessly to describe a woman whose curves were so ample they seemed inflated; he also used it to describe chairs, but we’ll save that objectification discussion for another day.

Word: Counter-Earth

Usage: “I wouldn’t touch you if you were the last man on Counter-Earth.”

Meaning: a hypothetical planet, imagined by someone named Philolaus in ancient Greek times, before Socrates and when they still thought we all revolved around a “central fire” (Counter-Sun?). His word for it was beautiful: “Anticthon.”

Word(s): Tea Dance

Meaning: originally, a swinging singles party in the ages Victorian through Jazz; today, it’s more of a “T is for tranny” thing.

Word: Anthropometry

Meaning: Literally, it’s the measure of a man or a woman; it’s the measurement of human parts relative to the whole. Art historically, it’s the name used by Yves Klein for some of his more infamous work.

Word: Psychedelicate

Meaning: “Something that is simultaneously psychedelic and tender,” says Urban Dictionary, because every time you think you’ve made something up, Urban Dictionary is there to prove you wrong.

Word: Gradient

Meaning: In terms of colour, a gradient is a smooth blending of light to dark, or from one colour to another.