A place to explore beautiful, curious words, reflections on language and literary wisdom past and present.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecuriouswordemporium/p/recondite?r=74brvj&utm_medium=ios
The Word Emporium
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Just one more page, we say.
Which becomes a chapter.
Which becomes another.
Then the promise of “just one more” quietly dissolves.
Suddenly, the evening has slipped away, spent in another world.
The Germans have a word for that:
Lesewut.
#words #reading
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Yes, it is!!!
The Greek word symposium literally means “drinking together.”
But the symposium was never merely social. It was a space where conversation deepened, arguments were tested, and ideas were refined in company.
Not consensus, but refinement…
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Some things cross our path.
Others become woven into our story.
Nodus.
A Latin word for a knot, bond, or entanglement.
#words #etymology
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🇵🇱 Not my circus, not my monkeys. → Not my problem.
🇪🇸 To sell smoke. → To make empty promises.
🇦🇷 Like a cow watching a train. → Utter bewilderment.
Today at the Word Emporium: ten everyday sayings that sound completely unhinged in translation.
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The Word Cup Has Begun 🏆!
48 words. 48 ways of seeing the world.
Group stages.
Then the final rounds.
One champion.
Friendly lobbying is permitted.
Bribery, ballot stuffing, and threatening people with dictionaries are not.
open.substack.com/pub/thecurio...
One hundred words later, the shelves at the Word Emporium are filling slowly.
From liminal to virga, hiraeth to doki-doki, words have slowly gathered since opening.
Today’s piece is a walk through the Emporium. What it’s been, and what it’s becoming.
#words
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A handful of syllables that continue unfolding inside the mind.
Today’s Word Emporium piece looks at ten lines - from Heraclitus to Rilke - that keep speaking long after the page is closed.
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A favourite chair. A certain café. A stretch of coastline revisited over years. The piece of music that steadies you almost immediately.
The Spanish have a beautiful word for the places that bring is back to ourselves:
Querencia.
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līlā
A Sanskrit word for divine play.
Music played for the sheer pleasure of it.
A conversation that wanders wherever curiosity leads.
An afternoon spent doing something you love and forgetting the clock.
Moments when we stop performing and simply participate.
open.substack.com/pub/thecurio...
This German word, 'lesewut', is the other end of the spectrum from the Japanese word 'tsundoku'
#booksky
Just one more page, we say.
Which becomes a chapter.
Which becomes another.
Then the promise of “just one more” quietly dissolves.
Suddenly, the evening has slipped away, spent in another world.
The Germans have a word for that:
Lesewut.
#words #reading
open.substack.com/pub/thecurio...
