FASHION Magazine

Word: Hysteria

Meaning: A common 19th-century medical diagnosis; a nervous condition, or acute outbreak of nerves, that remains inexplicably linked to being female.

Word: Pedeconference

Meaning: To walk and talk, especially through the corridors of power.

Usage: “Jed and Leo pedeconference all the way back to the Oval Office—and it’s a long way—as Leo tells him that was impressive.” — a Television Without Pity recap of The West Wing, 2003

Word: Fixer

Meaning: One who fixes—in the sense of arranging—illegal or semi-illegal things. Not a criminal, but a means to crime.

Usage: “Well, he misspoke.” “About what? That you’re the firms fixer? Or that you’re any good at it?” — Michael Clayton (2007)

Word: Demotic

Meaning: Of/relating to ordinary, plain-spoken, colloquial language; vernacular.

Usage: “[Smith’s] verses were resolutely demotic, even as she played with the imagery that Rimbaud drew from the Bible and Eliphas Lévi and fairy tales and illustrated geographies, and she deployed this imagery even as she devoted poems to Edie Sedgwick, Marianne Faithfull, and Anita Pallenberg.”

Word: Blackgeoisie

Meaning: A “new” class of African Americans with money and “fashion power.” (Just typing this, I shuddered.)

Usage: “But if in 2012 the “black-geoisie” has integrated all the white codes, it does not [do so] literally. [There] is always a classic twist, with a bourgeois ethnic reference (a batik-printed turban/robe, a shell necklace, a ‘créole de rappeur’) that recalls the roots.” — a French Elle writer named Nathalie Dolivo in “Black Fashion Power”

Word: Bashtag

Meaning: A Twitter hashtag (you know, the categorical or punchline-type coda to your tweet) meant to insult, or bash, what you’re tweeting about.

Usage: “Expect to see #bashtag appearing soon in slide decks on social media across the land. It is a very simple way to describe what advertisers don’t want to happen.” — Alexis Madrigal on the Atlantic wire

Word: Sangfroid

Meaning: Coolness and imperturbability in the face of difficult things.

Usage: “They looked like everybody else, nondescript. They shared in the torpor of the town and in its puerile agitations. They lost every trace of a critical spirit, while gaining an air of sang-froid.” — Albert Camus, The Plague

Word: Camarilla

Meaning: A private, often secret, even sinister group of unelected advisors surrounding a leader or ruler; a cabal.

Usage: “SEKVIA’S DARK OUTLOOK; King Peter Dominated by the Military Camarilla. Prospects Are That Radicals Will Win at Approaching Election—King Peter May Then Leave the Country.” – a New York Times cablegram in 1903. (Sekvia, by the way, was in the Balkans… I think.)

Word: Holarchy

Meaning: A universal structure in which each component, or holon, is both a part and a whole; both separate and part of something bigger.

Usage: “Humanity is amalgamating into a collective intelligence, a global brain, able to react and respond to threats as a holarchy, without centralized control.” — Daniel Pinchbeck in Dazed & Confused

Word: Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia; also spelled hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia. Spot the difference!

Meaning: The fear of long words.

Usage: “Those who find this column troubling are suffering from hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia—the fear of long words. Or, more likely, rupophobia0—a fear of rubbish.” — Chris Lloyd, The Northern Echo, quote via Wiktionary.

Word: Blackout

Meaning(s): A regional or even wider-spread failure of electric power; an intentional shutting down of electric power to protect a region from air strikes; a loss of human consciousness; a loss of memory; a suspension of radio, TV, or internet communication.

Usage: “The blackout started at 12:00 a.m. Eastern time (5:00 a.m. GMT) on Wednesday morning and will last until 12:00 a.m. Eastern time on Thursday (also 5:00 a.m. GMT).” — from the National Post‘s excellent summary of SOPA and STOP SOPA action

Word: Tomorrowland

Meaning: A future based on yesterday’s fantasies, at least according to the Dictionary of Walt Disney; a metonym for retro-futurism.

Usage: “And, of course, there’s Tomorrowland. The time of date is 1986 there. The place is the city of the future, where a trip to the moon is an everyday thing.” — Art Linkletter on Disneyland, 1955