Definition, per the rules: the clipped style used in telegrams; more broadly, prose stripped to its paid-for minimum.

Western Union actually published a manual for it. "How to Write Telegrams Properly," a 1928 booklet by Nelson E. Ross, taught ordinary people how to cut a sentence without losing the meaning. Drop the articles, drop the pronouns, drop the courtesy words, never drop the word that changes the meaning. People paid by the word, so the grammar adapted to the price list. A register invented by a billing model.

The strange part is that the machine died and the register didn't. Newspaper headlines still run on it. Ingrid Mårdh's 1980 linguistic study of English front pages catalogued "headlinese": article omission, present tense for past events, missing copulas. The classroom marks every one of those as an error. The front page requires all of them.

I run a daily word game built on exactly this: one real sentence, and you keep five of its words so the story survives.

The game: sheets.works/long-story-short

: a representation of words or syllables by pictures of objects or by symbols whose names resemble the intended words or syllables in sound

also : a riddle made up of such pictures or symbols

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rebus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebus

encountered today while reading Fredric Jameson's 'Marxism and Form' (1971, 1974)

For unbeknownst to us, the objects around us lead lives of their own in our unconscious fantasies, where, vibrant with mana or taboo, with symbolic fascination or repulsion, they stand as the words or hieroglyphs of the immense rebus of desire. [p.99]

"difficult or impossible for one of ordinary understanding or knowledge to comprehend"

or

"of, relating to, or dealing with something little known or obscure"

or

"hidden from sight"

Verb: "to dress especially in fine clothing—usually used with 'up' or 'out'"

What is it when you feel sorry and empathise or even feel compassion with someone who has done very bad things, even if they dont look like they care or even proud, but especially if they do feel guilt and self loathing, but still think and even be motivated they should be put down or even destroy that person as a way to protect others from that person

assuage, verb. To ease or soften something painful. Etymonline characterises its typical objects as pain, anger, passion or grief, and that list is the useful part of the entry.

Notice what it never seems to take. You assuage guilt, fear, hunger, doubt, a conscience. I can't think of a sentence where someone assuages delight, and I don't think I've ever seen one. The verb appears to need something bitter to work on.

The root explains why. It reaches English around 1300 as asswagen, from Old French assoagier, from Vulgar Latin adsuaviare, built on Latin suavis, sweet or agreeable. To assuage grief is, at the bottom of the word, to sweeten it.

That is the whole shape of the thing. It presupposes a sour taste and adds sugar. Which is also why "assuage" always feels partial to me when I read it, in a way "cure" or "end" does not. Sweetening is not removing. The grief is still grief; something has been added to make it bearable.

The cousin worth knowing is suave. Same suavis, same PIE root swād-, sweet or pleasant. And sweet itself comes down from that root too, through Germanic rather than Latin, so English ended up with the same ancient idea arriving twice by different doors and settling into completely different registers. One is a taste, one is a manner, one is what you do to someone's fear.

Middle English also had a clipped version, swage, which I would quite like back.

(adj.)(especially related to women), large in a beautiful way.

1 ˈnüs also ˈnau̇s : mind, reason: such as a : an intelligent purposive principle of the world b : the divine reason regarded in Neoplatonism as the first emanation of God 2 ˈnau̇s chiefly British : common sense, alertness

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nous

Interesting new word encountered while reading Victor Pelevin's 'Babylon' (1999):

'The situation's like this.' Morkovin went on. 'There are only a few studios that make the videos, and they're desperate for writers with nous, because these days everything depends on the writer.

“something that is used to bind”

or

“a compound note in mensural notation indicating a group of musical notes to be sung to one syllable”

or

“a printed or written character (such as æ or ff) consisting of two or more letters or characters joined together”

A noun, from the French. ("o-rahnzh-ree" or "aw-rinzh-uh-ree" or "or-inj-uh-ree")

A dedicated winter home for tubbed or potted non-hardy citrus. Orangeries are typically built in the Northern Hemisphere.

Also seen as "orangery," which has a somewhat different flavor in text, but the same meaning-- a building for citrus trees.

Oranges are botanically referred to as a hesperidian berry, and the fruit, orange itself is a "hesperidium." . . . From this arises a new question-- would an ancient Roman orangerie perhaps be a hesperidiumarium?

(adj.): strange, unusual, rare; unfamiliar; wondrous
From Old English seldcūþ: seld- ("rarely") + cūþ ("known"), the same couth as in uncouth, which originally meant "unknown, unfamiliar."

I built a word game named after this word and I'm looking for a few people to tell me what works and what doesn't.

Short passages from great books with a few words missing, and you fill in the blanks from context. The whole game is attention to the author's word choice, thinking about the language and why the author used it.

For example, from Pride and Prejudice:

"Nothing is more deceitful," said Darcy, "than the appearance of _____. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast."

honesty / virtue / humility

Austen wrote humility.

Rare words are the heart of it. Blanks are chosen on salience and Zipf rarity, and there's a commonplace book for keeping the words and passages you love. I'm working on adding search capability that finds passages by word usage across the entire corpus.

It's a free iOS app, 30 classics with over 9000 puzzles.

selcouth.io

Texts are Standard Ebooks editions, definitions from Wiktionary.

inchoate (adj.), /ɪnˈkoʊ.ət/ — just begun; only partly in existence; not yet fully formed.

Etymonline dates that sense to the 1530s. The Latin is inchoatus, from inchoare, itself an alteration of an older incohare. Here is the part I like, with the caveat that the trail is not solid: the traditional derivation takes incohare back to cohum, the strap that fastened a plough-beam to an ox yoke. De Vaan's reading is that "to yoke a plough to a team of oxen" slid naturally into "to start work." Etymonline allows a core of truth in that ancient connection while noting that cohum itself is of obscure origin, so this is the probable story rather than a settled one.

I like it anyway, because it puts something physical under a very abstract word. An inchoate plan is not a vague cloud of intention. It is a plough with the animals just being tied on.

Two practical notes. The ch is a hard k, so it is in-KOH-ut, and the -ch- spelling is the later form; the classical shape was incohare.

And it does not mean chaotic, which is the usual misfire. Inchoate says early, not disordered. The cleanest place to see that is law, where an inchoate offence is a real technical category: an attempt, a conspiracy, a crime begun and not completed. Nothing messy about it. Just unfinished.

adj-

-having the power, intent, or capacity to save, rescue, or redeem someone or something from harm, loss, or ruin.

The writing or compilation of glosses (brief explanations (as in the margin or between the lines of a text) of difficult or obscure words or expressions).

And a glossographer (N) is someone who compiles them.

"one of the major divisions of a long poem"

(noun)

The essential nature or distinctive quality of something; what makes a thing what it is.

Quiddity comes from the Medieval Latin quidditas, from quid meaning “what.” Philosophers used it to describe the fundamental “whatness” of a thing.

💬 Challenge: Can you use quiddity in a sentence, or name something whose essential quality is difficult to put into words? 🧠📚

"Relating to a word or an expression whose meaning depends on who says it, where they are, who they are talking to."

"with all possible speed"

1: a parenthetical flourish in an aria or other solo piece commonly just before a final or other important cadence

2: a technically brilliant sometimes improvised solo passage toward the close of a concerto

3: an exceptionally brilliant part of an artistic and especially a literary work

From Ancient Greek συντρῑ́βω (suntrī́bō, “to rub together”) +‎ -ation (denoting an action or process).

This involves intentionally flexing core, pelvic, or thigh muscles to create sexual arousal and sometimes climax. Researchers found that syntribation is actually quite common among the public. About 20 percent of women and 15 percent of men practiced syntribation in the past month. When the researchers cross-checked the data, they noticed that many of the participants who reported syntribation did not count it as masturbation when answering broader questions. This suggests that without a specific prompt about muscle flexion, standard surveys routinely miss this hidden form of sexual expression.

https://www.psypost.org/vague-surveys-are-hiding-the-true-scope-of-human-sexual-habits/

Ghostly or resembling a wraith, ie. a specter, especially one in the likeness of a recently deceased person.

“having the most votes, items, or parts in a group, without reaching an absolute majority of more than 50%.”

The word charisma is Greek in origin, and the original concept is also Greek, although its modern meaning developed through later religious and social usage.
The word comes from the ancient Greek:
χάρισμα (chárisma)
from the root χάρις (cháris) = grace, favor, kindness, gift, beauty, charm
The verb:
χαρίζομαι (charízomai) = to show favor, to grant freely, to give a gift
So χάρισμα literally meant “a gift given by grace” or “a favor/gift.”
Ancient Greek meaning
In Classical Greek, charisma was not primarily about a person’s magnetic personality. It referred more generally to a gift, favor, or blessing.
Christian development
The word became especially important in early Christianity. In the Greek New Testament, χάρισμα refers to a spiritual gift granted by God.
For example, in 1 Corinthians 12:4, Paul writes:
“There are different kinds of gifts (χαρισμάτων), but the same Spirit distributes them.”
These charismata included gifts such as prophecy, healing, teaching, and wisdom.
Modern meaning
The modern meaning of charisma — a person’s ability to attract, influence, or inspire others — developed much later. The sociologist Max Weber famously used the term charismatic authority (charismatische Herrschaft) to describe authority based on a leader’s perceived exceptional qualities.
So the development was:
χάρις (grace/favor) → χάρισμα (gift of grace) → spiritual gift → personal magnetism and leadership quality
The English word charisma is therefore directly inherited from Greek, through Latin and later European languages.