More words to trouble the lj dictionary. (2/3 ljversary posts)
Because I'm a geek, I tend to look up words that I don't understand, or maybe the geeky part is in collecting those words and putting them in a list. Anyway, here are some words (and their meanings) used in fandom that sent me scuttling do the dictionary over the past 12 months - some are fandom specific, some to do with literature and linguistics, and some are completely random. They mostly appeared in metafannish discussions. (I did this last year too.)
The definitions are cribbed or paraphrased from whatever dictionary, printed or online, that was to hand. Feel free to point out corrections and clarifications if you think they're needed. I'll probably post an amalgamated list on my website soonish.
Apophenia - The spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness of unrelated phenomena.
http://skepdic.com/apophenia.html
Aposiopesis - when a speaker stops/doesn't finish a statement...
To backslash - turning a canonically gay character straight, as suggested here.
Calque - a word or phrase that's borrowed from another language literally or root by root (eg worldview from weltanschauung). More.
Cognate - related to/derived from/allied to.
Concatenation - a series of links that are united.
Congeries - a collection, a mass or a heap.
Curlicue - fancy twist or curl, especially in handwriting.
Coulrophobia - fear of clowns (apparently a comparatively recent coinage).
Dimorphism - the occurrence of two forms within the same species.
Exonym - a name used by an outside group for a place/people (Germany/L'Allemagne for Deutchland).
Endonym is its opposite - what a people call their own country/place/selves
Folksonomy is a neologism/new coinage for a practice of collaborative categorization using freely chosen keywords. More colloquially, this refers to a group of people co-operating spontaneously to organize information into categories. ('Bottom -up categorisation'). Link.
Glossemes - the smallest meaningful units of a language.
Gravid - pregnant (particularly with the meaning of heavy).
Hypertrophy - an increase in mass or girth (of parts of the body).
In medias res - when a story begins in the middle of things
Inhere - to stick to, to remain firm to something (think inherent).
Instantiate - to be or to provide and example of something.
Oneiric - belonging to dreams.
Osculation - a kiss.
Pabulum - any substance that can be used as food/insipid intellectual nourishment.
Panoptic - all seeing. A panopticon is a prison where all the prisoners can be watched from one point, an exhibition room.
Perquisite (shortened as perk) - incidental benefit from your job, a casual profit.
Picayune - petty.
Polysyndeton - repetition of conjunctions (for rhetorical effect). More.
Pro tem is short for pro tempore (for the time being).
Quondam - former.
Scare quotes - quotation marks used for purposes other than to identify a direct quotation, such as for emphasis or irony. The conversational equivalent of scare quotes or apologetic quotes is a hand gesture known as air quotes or finger quotes which mimics the appearance of quotation marks.
Sensu lato - in the broad sense (Latin)
Synecdoche - a figure of speech where a reference to a part = reference to a whole and vice versa.
Tegiverstate - to use evasions or ambiguities; to equivocate and to change sides.
Tropism - orientation in response to stimulus eg growth or movement of a plant
Weltanschauung - (German) worldview
Some acronyms
CMC - computer-mediated communication
NWS - Not Work Safe (I've also seen NSFW - Not Safe For Work)
tl;dr - too long; didn't read (recent variation, DL?DR - don't like? don't read.)
There's a great definition of meta (one of those I know it when I see it, but it's hard to define words) here from caille
The definitions are cribbed or paraphrased from whatever dictionary, printed or online, that was to hand. Feel free to point out corrections and clarifications if you think they're needed. I'll probably post an amalgamated list on my website soonish.
Apophenia - The spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness of unrelated phenomena.
http://skepdic.com/apophenia.html
Aposiopesis - when a speaker stops/doesn't finish a statement...
To backslash - turning a canonically gay character straight, as suggested here.
Calque - a word or phrase that's borrowed from another language literally or root by root (eg worldview from weltanschauung). More.
Cognate - related to/derived from/allied to.
Concatenation - a series of links that are united.
Congeries - a collection, a mass or a heap.
Curlicue - fancy twist or curl, especially in handwriting.
Coulrophobia - fear of clowns (apparently a comparatively recent coinage).
Dimorphism - the occurrence of two forms within the same species.
Exonym - a name used by an outside group for a place/people (Germany/L'Allemagne for Deutchland).
Endonym is its opposite - what a people call their own country/place/selves
Folksonomy is a neologism/new coinage for a practice of collaborative categorization using freely chosen keywords. More colloquially, this refers to a group of people co-operating spontaneously to organize information into categories. ('Bottom -up categorisation'). Link.
Glossemes - the smallest meaningful units of a language.
Gravid - pregnant (particularly with the meaning of heavy).
Hypertrophy - an increase in mass or girth (of parts of the body).
In medias res - when a story begins in the middle of things
Inhere - to stick to, to remain firm to something (think inherent).
Instantiate - to be or to provide and example of something.
Oneiric - belonging to dreams.
Osculation - a kiss.
Pabulum - any substance that can be used as food/insipid intellectual nourishment.
Panoptic - all seeing. A panopticon is a prison where all the prisoners can be watched from one point, an exhibition room.
Perquisite (shortened as perk) - incidental benefit from your job, a casual profit.
Picayune - petty.
Polysyndeton - repetition of conjunctions (for rhetorical effect). More.
Pro tem is short for pro tempore (for the time being).
Quondam - former.
Scare quotes - quotation marks used for purposes other than to identify a direct quotation, such as for emphasis or irony. The conversational equivalent of scare quotes or apologetic quotes is a hand gesture known as air quotes or finger quotes which mimics the appearance of quotation marks.
Sensu lato - in the broad sense (Latin)
Synecdoche - a figure of speech where a reference to a part = reference to a whole and vice versa.
Tegiverstate - to use evasions or ambiguities; to equivocate and to change sides.
Tropism - orientation in response to stimulus eg growth or movement of a plant
Weltanschauung - (German) worldview
Some acronyms
CMC - computer-mediated communication
NWS - Not Work Safe (I've also seen NSFW - Not Safe For Work)
tl;dr - too long; didn't read (recent variation, DL?DR - don't like? don't read.)
There's a great definition of meta (one of those I know it when I see it, but it's hard to define words) here from caille