/ˈlɪbəti/. Freedom from captivity, slavery, constraint or tyranny.
linguistics
lagom
lagom /LAH-gəm/. adjective. A Swedish word meaning something like “happily and satisfyingly just the right amount.” Often translated as enough or adequate, lagom has a more positive connotation of fulfillment (though not perfection). Popularly believed to come from laget om (around the team), which goes back to the Viking custom of passing around a shared drink, each person contentedly sipping, it is actually derived from laghum (according to common sense). One of Sweden’s most well-known proverbs is Lagom är bäst, literally “the right amount is best” but often translated as “enough is a good as a feast.” See also: hygge.
litotes
litotes /LIY-toh-teez/. noun. A figure of speech using understatement to express an affirmative by negating its opposite. The description sounds more complicated than the simply reality in use: it is basically the opposite of hyperbole. “Warren Buffett isn’t too bad off,” is an example, as would be John Coltrane saying he “played the sax a little.” If you’ve ever used a phrase like, “he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed,” then you employed litotes. From Greek litotes (simplicity); from litos (small). See also: meiosis, which includes understatement of other kinds.
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limen
limen /LI-mən/. noun. A threshold, typically of consciousness and sensation. The point below which a sensation isn’t perceived. See also, the more common adjective, liminal. Latin līmen (threshold).
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litost
litost /LEE-tohst/. noun. A Czech word defined by Milan Kundera as “a state of torment caused by a sudden insight into one’s own miserable self,” sometimes accompanied by a desire for revenge…to make another share in the suffering.
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logolatry
logolatry /lə-GAW-lə-tree/. noun. An unhealthy veneration or worship of words. Coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. From Greek logo- (speech, words) + -latry (worship of).
“What is the whole system from Philo to Plotinus, and thence to Proclus inclusively, but one fanciful process of hypostasizing logical conceptions and generic terms? In Proclus it is Logolatry run mad.” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
“What Mark scroggins calls the poet’s ‘logolatry’ includes not just an entrancing litany of polysyllabic and arcane words but also a fondness for utterances of humbler origin.” (Harryette Mullen)
But as “Protestant ‘logolatry’ supplant[ed] the idolatry of which the reformers accuse Catholicism,” Shakespeare’s stupid puritans point to what was potentially dangerous about the cult of the ear. (Robert Hornback)
“I address the ways in which Erasmus flirts with logolatry, a veneration of the word that would help shape Reformation and Counter-Reformation thought.” (James Kearney)
“I waste a lot of time in logolatry. I am a verbalist, Cynthia—a tinkling symbolist. I am the founder and leader of the new school of literature—The Emblemists. I wear a wide black hat, a dirty shirt, boots with spurs, and shave once a month.” (Conrad Aiken)
Elsewhere: Wordnik.