FASHION Magazine

Word: Progressive

Meaning: Well, that’s the problem. Progressive, in a political sense, is associated with leftism, secularism, modernization, even radicalism, but when both conservatives and liberals use it, few know quite what it means.

Usage: “The very nature of the word progressive suggests that the fight for justice and equality is never-ending.” — from an early blog post on Occupy Wall Street

Word: Twitterology

Meaning: The study of tweets, or more academically, “real-time language data.”

Word: Firecrotch

Meaning: A redhead whose carpet matches her drapes.

Usage: “Lindsay Lohan is a firecrotch!” — Brandon Davis, 2006

Word: Multiverse

Meaning: A hypothetical set of multiple universes existing in a possible reality; also called parallel universes.

Usage: “Short of invoking a benevolent creator, many physicists see only one possible explanation: Our universe may be but one of perhaps infinitely many universes in an inconceivably vast multiverse.” — Discover, December 2008

Word: Glamourflage

Meaning: “To wear Brobdingnagian accessories in a stylized effort to shield or distract.” — from a Sunday Styles profile on celebrity stylist June Ambrose

Usage: “As a teenager in the ’80s, she dressed in elaborate get-ups to glamour-flage her severe acne.” — from the same article

Word: Electro-prog, or, if you wanna be a super-nerd, electrog

Meaning: Music that combines the tools, mindset, and arenas of electro music with the high-’70s ear-strainingness of prog.

Usage: “Dad, have you heard this new electro-prog masterpiece yet? It’s Justice. I think you’d really like it.” — me

Word: Near-futurism

Meaning: A concern with the events of the future, coupled with a belief that the future is… now.

Usage: “The current wave of literary near futurism comes at a time when the printed book — and the very act of traditional reading — seems under siege by digital technology.” — New York Times, The 10th Annual Year in Ideas, 2010

Word: Ecstasy

Meaning: An emotional or spiritual rapture; the state of transcending consciousness.

Usage: “As a small child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life.” — Baudelaire

Word: Trantastic

Meaning: A word to describe someone (of either gender, but usually boyz) who looks tranny-ish, and also fantastic. But you could have deduced that.

Usage: “Did you love that Sid Neigum show? I thought it was trantastic.”

Word: Drunkorexia

Meaning: A condition—perhaps more of a phenomenon—in which one eats less in order to drink more without exceeding a restrictive calorie count.

Usage: “Drunkorexia doesn’t fit many of the party-hardy stereotypes of campus drinking, for one major reason: the majority of drunkorexics are women.” — Globe and Mail

Word: Lubok

Meaning: Russian popular folk art print, common from the last half of the 17th century through the beginning of the 20th.

Usage: “It was the naive coincidence of picture and narrative that gave pleasure to the spectator-reader of the lubok.” — from some textbook on Russian post-modernism

Word: Désamour

Meaning: Unlove, although that’s not an English word; maybe disenchantment, then.

Usage: “S’il n’est pas sûr, malgré le dicton, que l’esprit vienne aux filles avec l’amour, il semble s’aiguiser dans le désamour.” — Hervé Bazin in Madame Ex.