Occasionally, I post new-to-me words discovered during my reading rambles. I do this for my edification. If you’ve stumbled across this post and you're a word-nerd, you might enjoy these as well. Following each word is a short definition (sometimes with a thought interjected parenthetically), trailed by the context in which the word was found.
id (id): the part of the mind in which innate instinctive impulses and primary processes are manifest | “The avant-garde is supposed to be the conscience of the culture, not its id.” - Janet Malcolm, Forty-One False Starts, Essays on Artists and Writers
ersatz (ˈerˌzäts,ˈerˌsäts): not real or genuine | “I used to visit the artist David Salle in his studio and try to learn the secret of art from him. What was he doing in his enigmatic, allusive, aggressive art? What does any artist do when he produces an artwork? What are the properties and qualities of authentic art, as opposed to ersatz art?” - Forty-One False Starts, Essays on Artists and Writers, Janet Malcolm
abjure (əbˈjo͝or): formally reject or disavow a formerly held belief, usually under pressure | “To the writer, the painter is a fortunate alter ego, an embodiment of the sensuality and exteriority that he has abjured to pursue his invisible, odorless calling.” - Forty-One False Starts, Essays on Artists and Writers, Janet Malcolm
atoll (ˈatˌôl,ˈatˌäl): a ring-shaped reef, island, or chain of islands formed of coral | “Multiple species associate with one another and over time form a large, diverse structure—a coral reef. Sometimes the process continues, and an atoll is built.” - Mad at the World, A Life of John Steinbeck, William Souder
apophatically (apəˈfadik): obtained through negating concepts that might be applied to him, the opposite of cataphatic (of knowledge of God) obtained through defining God with positive statements. “But his view of God as the basic ground of all being and all experience, a basic ground which is apophatically termed ‘Nothing’ or ‘Emptiness,’ is identical with that of Nishida and indeed of the Buddhist tradition.” - Zen and the Birds of Appetite, Thomas Merton