prosopagnosia /praws-ə-pag-NOH-zhyə/. noun. An inability to recognize familiar, or what should be well-known, faces. Commonly(ish) known as “face blindness.” From Greek prosōpon (face) + a (without) + gnōsis(knowledge).
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WORD(S)
A cornucopia—a logocopia!—of awesome words.
seraglio
seraglio /se-RAHL-yoh/. noun. An enclosure used for confinement, most often for a harem or polygamous unit. For Muslim nobles, the rooms or apartments reserved for wives and concubines. Or the harem itself. Sometimes, more generally, a Muslim noble house or palace as a whole. Sometimes, more generally, a brothel. From Italian serraglio(an enclosure or animal cage), from Latin sera (door bar), related to Turkish seray(palace).
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catafalque
catafalque /KAT-ə-fahlk/. noun. A temporary platform or tomb on which a body is laid in state for a funeral and/or procession. In Roman Catholic funerals, a coffin-shaped object draped with a pall, representing the corpse. From Italian catafalco (same meaning), from Greek kata (down or beside) + fala (scaffolding, or a wooden tower). The Medieval Latin use led to the French chafaud and échafaud (scaffold).
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megachiropteran
megachiropteran /meg-ə-kər-OPT-ər-ən/. noun or adjective. Of or pertaining to the suborder Megachiroptera, which includes herbivorous fruit bats and flying foxes. Despite the “mega” in the name, this order includes some microbats as small as 2.4 inches long! These bats are distinguished by smooth-crowned molars and a claw on the index finger.
Thanks to Reader S. for suggesting the word and sending a link to the page discussing why this is the best anagram in English (with “cinematographer”) and how it was found(scroll past the tech stuff) and listing some other awesome anagrams. :: Also, the full list of anagrams by score and real soapstone teaspoons.
“Moles and shrews still feed almost exclusively on insects, while various bat species (especially among the Megachiroptera, that other suborder) have attained much larger sizes and diverged into diets of fruit, nectar and pollen, fish, other bats, small birds and rodents, lizards, and blood.” (David Quammen)
agnotology / agnatology
agnotology / agnatology /ag-nə-TAHL-ə-jee/. noun. The study of cultural ignorance or doubt, particularly relating to scientific research and data. A recent coinage by Robert N. Proctor and Iain Boal combining Latin agnosia (ignorance) + ology (from Latin logy, the study of). See also misology (the fear or hatred of knowledge) and the earlier philosophical area of agnoiology. Thanks, Reader S.
“We need a political agnatology to complement our political epistemologies.” (Robert N. Proctor)
“Agnotology serves as a counterweight to traditional concerns for epistemology, refocusing questions about ”how we know“ to include questions about what we do not know, and why not. Ignorance is often not merely the absence of knowledge but an outcome of cultural and political struggle.” (Londa Schiebinger)
“Another element of agnotology consists in contending that the dismissal of science is supported by public opinion because people have a poor level of education and training.” (ed. Matthias Gross, Linsey McGoey)
garboil / garboyle
garboil / garboyle /GA(R)-boil/. noun. A tumult; a confusion; a commotion; an uproar; a hubbub; a hurlyburly. From Old Italian garbuglio (a tangle, a mess) < possibly from Latin bullīre (to boil).
“Far from the moiling crowd and garboyle of the world.” (The National Review)
“Yet others have disappeared, snatched from their places of refuge, to vanish into the prisons of the Exfernal Powers, denied trial, forbidden even to know the names of their accusers. Their minds may already have been destroyed by drugs and torture, their bodies melted into garboil.” (Margaret Atwood)
“…the most terrifying din and the principal uproar arises from the anguished howls of the devils, who, lying in wait in that confused garboil, receive chance blows from swords and suffer ruptures in the continuity of their substances, which are both aerial and invisible.” (Francois Rabelais)
“Then in ’82 there had been the Egyptian garboil I mentioned a moment ago; Joe Wolseley had asked for me point-blank, and with the press applauding and the Queen approving and Elspeth bursting into tears as I rogered her farewell, what the blazes could I do but fall in?” (George MacDonald Fraser)
“‘You have been grievously in error this day, sir. You have handed the throne of England to a malodorous Scotch garboil—or perchance a simpering Spaniard.’” (Rory Clements)
“…all Greece stood in marvellous garboil at that time, and the Athenians especially in great danger.” (Sir Thomas North)
“So much uncurbable, her garboils, Caesar,
Made out of her impatience…”
(William Shakespeare)
“Now manhod and garbroyls I chaunt…” (Richard Stanyhurst)
logodaedalist
logodaedalist /lawg-ə-DEE-də-list/. noun. One who is highly skilled in the use of words. See also logodaedaly (skill in using words). From Greek logodaidalos, from logos (word) + daidalos (skillful).
“He was well-read. He knew French. He was versed in logodaedaly and logomancy. He was an amateur of sex lore. He had a feminine handwriting.” (Vladimir Nabokov)
“‘raking out the clinker’ was a phrase of Kipling’s that appealed to Wodehouse, and polishing them to a near-final 1,500 next morning in revision was a pleasurable chore, logodaedaly following logorrhea.” (Richard Usborne)
“I am Bosco, the logodaedalist.
It’s my job to repair broken-down words…”
(James Laughlin)
“Words can be endlessly drawn upon to cancel out other words, when the spokesman is such a logodaedalist as Berowne. Not for nothing is he the predecessor of Mercutio, and both live under the aegis of Mercury — ‘the President of Language…’” (Harry Levin)
“For his book The Loco Logodaedalist in Situ, Williams laid cutout sheets on the English Physician’s pages to create found poems…” (Albert Mobilio)
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