dictionary

• neophyte a person who is new to a subject, skill, or belief
• accost approach and address (someone) boldly or aggressively
• puissance a test of a horse's ability to jump large obstacles in show jumping; great power, influence, prowess
• mantic relating to divination or prophecy
• heresy belief or opinion contrary to orthodox religious (esp. Christian) doctrine
• ipso facto by that very fact or act
• grok to understand intuitively/by empathy; to establish rapport with; to empathize or communicate sympathetically with; to experience enjoyment from
• sentinel value a special value in the context of an algorithm which uses its presence as a condition of temination, typically in a loop or recursive algorithm (flag, trip, rogue, signal value)
• AOA/AOS Angle Of Attack/Sideslip (air data)
• idiomatic peculiar to/characteristic of a given language; characterized by proficient use of idioms; resembling an idiom
• idiom an expression in usage of a language that is peculiar to itself because a) its meaning cannot be derived from its constituent words ("up in the air") or b) it uses words in a grammatically atypical way ("give way")
• continuous symmetry some symmetries can be viewed as motions, as opposed to discrete properties. Discrete symmetries can be reinterpreted as a subset of a higher dimensional continuous symmetry; a reflection of a 2D object in 3D space can be achieved by continuously rotating that object 180 degrees in a non-parallel plane
• meretricious tastelessly showy; attractive on the surface but having in reality no value or substance
• hedonic treadmill tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events. As someone makes more money, their expectations rise in tandem, which results in no permanent gain in happiness
• prosody the patterns of rhythm and sound used in poetry
• nonsense literature balances elements that make sense with some that do not, with the effect of subverting language conventions or logical reasoning
• wiki hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience directly. Hawaiian word meaning "quick"
• fiduciary involving trust, especially with regard to the relationship between a trustee and a beneficiary; a trustee
• chauvinism exaggerated/aggressive patriotism
• recondite little known (of a subject/knowledge)
• prosaic having the style or diction of prose; lacking poetic beauty
• philistine lacking in appreciation for art/culture
• teetotaler a person who never drinks alcohol; abstainer
• parity bit a bit appended to a string of binary for error detection. Ensures that the number of "1"s in the string is even or odd
• anthology a published collection of poems or other pieces of writing
• aikido a Japanese form of self-defense and martial art that uses locks, holds, throws, and the opponent's own movements
• penchant a strong or habitual liking for something; a tendency to do something
• polemical expressing or constituting a strongly critical attack on/controversial opinion about someone or something
• jawn (chiefly in eastern Pennsylvania) used to refer to a thing, place, person, or event that one need not or cannot give a specific name:
  • "these jawns are very inexpensive"
  • "who is this beautiful jawn?"
  • "the dude reporting this jawn has not the slightest clue"
• circumlocution the use of many words when fewer would do, esp. in a deliberate attempt to be vague/evasive
• discursive digressing from subject to subject; rambling; circumlocutory
• accident aka "destroying the exeption" or "a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid"; an informal fallacy: a deductively valid but unsound argument in statistical syllogism when an exception to a rule of thumb is ignored.
  
  cutting people with knives is a crime →
  surgeons cut people with knives →
  surgeons are criminals
• depose remove from office suddenly/forcefully
• amphibology a phrase/sentence that is grammatically ambiguous, leading to >1 possible interpretation: "she sees more of her children than her husband."
• otiose serving no practical purpose
• gnomic expressed in short, pithy maxims or aphorisms
• tableau a group of models or motionless figures representing a scene from a story/history
• solipsism the quality of being very self-centered/selfish; (philosophy) that the self is all that can be known to exist
• garish obtrusively bright and showy; lurid
• arity the number of operands taken by a function/logical operation
• webring collection of sites linked circularly, usually organized around a theme with a common navigation bar having links to next/previous/other
• repressive (esp. of a social/political system) inhibiting the freedom of a person or group; undemocratic
• grail a cup/plate that, according to medieval legend, was used by Jesus at the last supper and later became the object of many chivalric quests; the object of a prolonged endeavor
• dessication state of extreme dryness; process of extreme drying
• progenitor a thing from which another thing is descended/originates
• pedantry excessive concern with minor details/rules
• erudite having great knowledge/learning
• anti-pattern a common response to a recurring problem that is usually ineffective and risks being (highly) counterproductive
• Cunningham's Law the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer
• Barnum/Forer Effect psychological phenomenon whereby individuals give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that are supposedly tailored specifically to them, yet which in fact are vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people
• huckster one who sells something or serves biased interests using pushy/showy tactics
• Laniakea supercluster Hawaiian for "open skies"/"immense heaven"; the galaxy cluster that is home to the milky way and ~100,000 other nearby galaxies. not gravitationally bound
• philology branch of knowledge about the structure/development/relationships of a language or languages
• bicameral (of a legislative body) having two branches or chambers
• homoiconicity the property of a programming language that a program written in it can be manipulated as data using the language, thus the program's internal representation can be inferred just by reading the program itself
• semaphore variable or abstract data type used to control access to a common resource by multiple threads and avoid critical section problems in a concurrent system; a synchronization primitive
• décolletage neckline on a woman's dress, esp. one that reveals/emphasizes cleavage (Sienfeld: "that's quite the décolletage for a suffragette!")
• paradigm an example/pattern, especially an outstandingly clear/typical example
• Perpendicular Gothic third and final style of English gothic architecture developed in the Kingdom of England during the late Middle Ages, typified by large windows, four-centered arches, straight vertical/horizontal lines in the tracery, and regular arch-topped rectangular paneling (14th-17th century) (see King's College Chapel, Cambridge)
• recalcitrant having an obstinately uncooperative attitude toward authority
• Poe's Law without a clear indication of the author's intent, every parody of extreme views will be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the views being parodieed
• nickelodeon a jukebox operated by inserting a nickel; a movie theater with an admission fee of one nickel
• miniF2F a dataset of formal olympiad-level mathematics problem statements intended to provide a benchmark for neural theorem-proving
• sisyphean denoting/relating to a task that can never be completed
• mojibake garbled text that is the result of being decoded with the wrong character encoding
• p-value in null-hypothesis significance testing, the p-value is the probability of obtaining test results at least as extreme as the result actually observed, under the assumption that the null hypothesis is correct. a very small p-value means that such an observation would be very unlikely under the null hypothesis
• gestalt an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts
• perspicuous (of an account/representation) clearlly expressed/easily understood; lucid
• Delphic relating to the ancient Greek oracle at Delphi
• endianness the order of bytes of a word of data
• kluge a Rube Goldberg device in software or hardware
  • a clever programming trick intended to solve a particular nasty case in an expedient, if not clear, manner; ad-hockery, crockery
  • something that works for the wrong reason
  • a feature implemented in a rude manner
  • "I've kluged this routine to get around the bug, but there's probably a better way."
• cuspy (of a program) well-written; functionally excellent; oppose rude
• *bagelry methodology for producing bagels; one's current collection/stock of bagels or bagel-like objects
• idyll an extremely happy/peaceful/picturesque episode or scene, typically idealized/unsustainable
• occidental relating to countries of the West
• emanation an abstract but perceptible thing that originates from a source
• two-bit insignificant, cheap, worthless
• macabre disturbing/horrifying because of involvement/depiction of death/injury
• heterotopia discursive space that is somehow "other": disturbing, intense, incompatible, contradictory, transforming; worlds within worlds, mirroring and yet upsetting what is outside; a self-contained place that has rules which only exist in that world
• dysgenic exerting a detrimental effect on later generations through the inheritance of undesirable characteristics
• anon soon, shortly
• telos an ultimate object/aim
• Orthogonality Thesis an agent can have any combination of intelligence level and final goal, that is, its utility function and general intelligence vary independently
• emeritus retired but retaining an honorary title corresponding to that held immediately before retirement
• corrigendum an error to be corrected, esp. a printing error; a list of a book's errors and their corrections
• prescriptive relating to the imposition or enforcement of a rule or method; (of a right, title, or institution) having become legally established/accepted by longtime usage
• fulmination an expression of vehement protest; denunciation
• abelian (of a group) having members related by a commutative (ab = ba) relation
• eclectic deriving ideas, style, taste from a broad/diverse range of sources
• frenetic fast/energetic in a rather wild/uncontrolled way
• cyclomatic complexity the number of linearly independent paths through a program's source code, computed using the control-flow graph
• recherché rare, exotic, obscure
• sapience wisdom; sageness; profound knowledge; the reasonable soul; reason
• prolegomenon preliminary discussion, esp. a formal essay introducing a complex work
• profusion a large quantity of something
• ecclesiatical relating/appropriate for use in a church
• tendentious expressing/promoting a particular cause/point of view, esp. a controversial one
• hypostatic abstraction formal operation the transforms a predicate into a relation; for example "honey is sweet" into "honey has sweetness". increases the arity of the original predicate: sweet(honey) → 1, has(honey, sweetness) → 2
• reification (aka concretism, hypostatization) a fallacy of ambiguity when an abstraction is treated as if it were a concrete, real event/physical entity. commonly, the confusion of a model with reality: "the map is not the territory"
• exoteric outside/independent from one's experience and can be ascertained by anyone
• eggcorn word/phrase that sounds like/is mistakenly used in a seemingly logical/plausible way for another word or phrase (e.g. affect/effect)
• metonym a thing is referred to by the name of a closely associated thing (e.g. "the pentagon" used to refer to the US military/leadership)
• gadabout habitual pleaser-seeker; gallivanter
• screed long, tedious speech/writing; leveled layer of material (e.g. cement) applied to a floor/surface
• ergodicity the idea that a point of a moving system (synamical/stochastic process) will eventually visit all parts of the space in which it could possibly move, in a uniform and random sense. implies that the average behavior of the system can be deduced from the trajectory of a single "typical" point. the system cannot be reduced/factored into smaller components
• comely pleasing/wholesome in appearance; beautiful
• gerontocracy rule/government by the elderly
• polyomino plane geometric figure formed by joining one or more squares edge to edge
• dialectic the art of practice of arriving at the truth by the exchange of logical arguments
• garrulous given to excessive, often trivial/rambling talk; tiresomely talkative
• irascible prone to outbursts of temper; easily angered
• panacea remedy for all ills/difficulties; cure-all
• Calvinball (from Calvin and Hobbes) a sport in which the participants make up the rules as they go, never using the same rules twice
• yeoman's work very good, hard, and valuable work done, esp. to support a cause
• hyperscale ability of an architecture to scale appropriately with demand — involves the seamless addition of compute, memory, networking, storage
• convivial (of an atmosphere/event) friendly, lively, and enjoyable
• sui generis unique
• coterminous having the same boundaries/extent in space/time/meaning
• coterie small group of people with shared interests/taste, esp. exclusive of others
• astroturf simulated or artificially created public support for something, generated by an orchestrated marketing campaign/PR effort
• quotidian ordinary; occurring every day; daily
• cognoscenti people considered to be especially well informed about a particular subject
• hovel small, squalid, unpleasant, simply constructed dwelling
• miasma highly unpleasant/unhealthy smell/vapor
• millenarianism the belief by a religious, social, or political group/movement in a coming fundamental transformation of society, after which "all things will be changed"
• theosophy any of a number of philosophies claiming that a knowledge of God may be achieved through spiritual ecstasy, direct intuition, or special individual relations
• elegaic of/relating to/involving an elegy or something that expresses similar mournfulness/sorrow
• assuage make (an unpleasant feeling) less intense; satisfy (an appetite or desire)
• brogdingnagian huge
• fascicle a small bundle; one of the parts of a book published in separate sections
• witness (mathematical logic) a specific value \(t\) to be substituted for variable \(x\) in an existential statement of the form \( \exists x \phantom x \psi (x) \) such that \( \psi (x) \) is true. for example: \(t=2\) witnesses \(\exists x : x \gt 1 \)
• counterfactual definiteness (CFD) (quantum mechanics) the ability to speak "meaningfully" about the results of measurements that have not been performed ("meaningfully" → the ability to treat unmeasured results on equal footing with measured results in statistical calculations)
• screening off if \( P(X | Y, Z) = P(X|Y)\), then \(Y\) is said to screen off \(Z\) from \(X\); \(Y\) renders \(Z\) probabilistically irrelevant to \(X\)
• locality an object is influenced directly only by its immediate surroundings
• ossified changed to bone or something resembling bone; (of ideas/attitudes) inflexible or old-fashioned
• latent (of a quality or state) existing but not yet developed or manifest; hidden; concealed
• ignominious characterized by or deserving shame/disgrace
• edify instruct/improve (someone) morally/intellectually
• kismet distiny/fate
• indelible (of ink or a pen) making marks that cannot be erased; unforgettable
• insouciant showing casual lack of concern; indifferent
• aptronym a name that is peculiarly suited to its owner
• torpor state of mental/physical inactivity or insensibility; lethargy; apathy
• dendronization evolution into a tree-like morphology
• carcinization evolutionary convergence of crustaceans on crab-like forms
• asemic having no specific semantic content; without the smallest unit of meaning
• monotonic always increasing or always decreasing; having no change in sign of derivative
• plebiscite the direct vote of all the members of an electorate on an important public question, such as a change in the constitution
• provenance chronology of the ownership/location of a historical object
• busy beaver (theoretical computer science) game that aims at finding a terminating program of a given size that produces the most output possible. design a halting turing maching with alphabet {0, 1} which writes the most 1s on the tape, using only a given set of states. the rules for the n-state game: 1) the machine must have n states in addition to the halting state, and 2) the tape initially contains only 0s. an n^th busy beaver is a turing maching that wins the n-state game: it attains the largest number of 1s among all other possible n-state turing machines
• metaball organic-looking n-dimensional isosurfaces, characterized by their ability to meld together when in close proximity to create single, continuous objects
• paucity fewness; scarcity; dearth
• *idiosynchronicity portmanteau of "idiosyncrasy" and "synchronicity"; when the particular tastes, attitudes, habits of two or more people are not necessarily identical but somehow compatible
• germane related to a matter at hand; relevant; literally, near akin
• tenuous weak; insubstantial; flimsy; slender
• panache flamboyant confidence of style or manner
• mercurial (of a person) subject to sudden/upredictable changes in mood/mind
• cachet prestige
• inimical harmful/hostile
• detritus dead particulate organic material; includes the bodies or fragments of bodies of dead organisms and fecal material; typically hosts communities of microorganisms that colonize and decompose it
• poset partially ordered set: a set with a binary relation indicating that, for certain pairs of elements, one of the elements precedes the other in the ordering. not every pair of elements is comparable
• Hasse diagram represents a finite poset by drawing its transitive reduction. for a poset (S, ≤), each element of S is a vertex and cureves are drawn between verteces x and y whenever x ≠ y and y covers x


Hasse diagram of the power set of a 4-element set, ordered by inclusion

• teleology a reason or explanation of something which serves as a function of its end, its purpose, or its goal, as opposed to something which serves as a function of its cause
• pecuniary relating to money; motivated by money; monetary
• St. Petersburg paradox counterexample to the principle of maximizing expected value. flip a fair coin until it comes up heads, at that point giving the player $2ⁿ, where n is the number of flips. how much should one be willing to pay to play this game? to calculate expected value, sum the products of each outcome with its probability:
\[ \begin{align} \$2 \cdot \frac{1}{2} + \$4 \cdot \frac{1}{4} + \$8 \cdot \frac{1}{8} &= \$1 + \$1 + \$1 + ... \\ &= \sum_{n=1}^{\infty} \left( 2^n \right) \left( \frac{1}{2} \right)^n \\ &= \infty \end{align} \]

the "best" theory of rational choice seems to entail that it would be rational to pay any finite fee for a single play

• countenance appearance; facial expression
• snowclone cliché and phrasal template that can be used and recognized in multiple variants:
  • one man's X is another man's Y
  • X is the new Y
  • the mother of all X
  • in space, no one can hear you X
  • to X or not to X
  • X considered harmful
  • X as a service
• neologism relatively recent/isolated term/phrase that may be in the proess of entering common use but isn't fully accepted as mainstream
• eliminativism materialist position in philosophy of mind: the majority of mental states in folk psychology do not exist; no coherent neural basis will be found for things like belief or desire, as they are poorly defined
• glib performed with natural, offhand ease; characterized by fluency of speech or writing that often suggests insincerity, superficiality, or lack of concern
• pugilism the profession or hobby of boxing
• marginalia notes in the margin
• septuagint the Greek old testament; the earliest extant Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible
• Matterhorn mountain of the Alps near Switzerland-Italy border
• putative supposed; generally accepted
• Godwin's Law an internet adage asserting that as an online discussion grows longer (regardless of topic/scope), the probability of a comparison to Nazis/Hitler approaches 1.0 (reductio ad hitlerium)
• vociferous (esp of a person or speech) vehement or clamorous
• voluble (of a person) talking fluently, readily, or incessantly
• frisson aka aesthetic chills or psychogenic shivers; a psychophysiological response to rewarding stimuli that often induces a pleasurable or otherwise positively-valenced affective state and transient paresthesia
• Ballmer Peak theory that computer programmers obtain quasi-magical, superhuman coding ability when they have a blood alcohol concentration between 0.129% and 0.138%
• physiocrat member of an 18th century group of French economists who believed that agriculture was the source of all wealth and that agricultural products should be highly priced. advocating adherence to a supposed natural order of social institutions, they also stressed the necessity of free trade
• kokopelli a fertility god of some southwestern North American Indian cultures. depcited as a hunchbacked flute player, known as a playful prankster/storyteller
• glass frog species of frog indigenous to Central and South America that can become semitransparent, storing red blood cells in their liver

• preternatural beyond/different from what is natural
• flotsam, jetsam, lagan, derelict are specific kinds of shipwreck with specific nautical meanings and legal consequences in the law of admiralty and marine salvage
• favela shantytown/slum, esp in Brazil
• Hawking index how far the average person reads through a book before giving up
• apologetics systematic argumentative discourse in defense (as of a doctrine); a branch of theology devoted to the defense of the divine origin and authority of Christianity
• hyperoperation infinite sequence of arithmetic operations that starts with a unary operation, continuing with the binary operations of addition (n=1), multiplication (n=2), exponentiation (n=3), tetration (n=4), pentation (n=5), hexation (n=6), etc
• antics foolish, outrageous, or amusing behavior
• variegated distinguished/characterized by variety
• quorum a select group
• Criterion Collection american home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring, and distributing "important classic and contemporary films"
• pending not yet decided/settled; in suspension
• kriegspiel chess variant in which each player can only see their own pieces
• dark chess variant in which each player only sees their pieces and the spaces they can move to
• boltzmann brain a fully formed brain, complete with memories of a full human life, that arises out of thermodynamic equilibrium
• kitsch naive imitation; overly eccentric, gratuitous, or of banal taste; melodramatic; superficially related to the human condition; naturalistic beauty standard; lacking in the conceptual depth of fine art
• triboelectric effect type of contact electrification where certain materials become electrically charged after they are separated from a different material
• steady-state model alternative to the big-bang theory of cosmological evolution where the density of matter in the expanding universe remains constant due to a continuous creation of matter. this adheres to the perfect cosmological principle, which assets that the observable univers is practically the same at any time and any place
• upbraid find fault with (someone); scold; reprimand
• limpid characterized by transparent clearness; easily intelligible; clear; pellucid
• trenchant forceful & clear; penetrating; distinct
• mirror neuron fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action being performed by another
• eusocial highly organized sociality; characterized by cooperative brood care, overlapping generations within a colony of adults, division of labor into reproductive & nonreproductive classes or "castes"
• polysemy the ability of words, signs, and symbols to have multiple meanings
• ruminant hoofed herbivorous grazing/browsing mammals, able to acquire nutrients from plant-based food by fermenting it in a specialized stomach prior to digestion. cattle, bovines, goats, sheep giraffes, deer, gazelles, antelopes
• reverie the condition of being lost in thought
• egregore occult concept representing a non-physical entity that arises from the collective thoughts of a distinct group of people
• dramatis personae the characters in a play or story
• noosphere the planetary "sphere of reason"; the highest stage of biosphere development, that of humankind's rational activities
• morass area of muddy/boggy ground; complicated/confused situation
• hylomorphism aristotilian philosophy which conceives every physical entity/being as a compound of matter (potency) and immaterial form (act), with the generic form as immanently real within the individual
• marketroid someone in a tech company's marketing department not especially savvy about the tech; concentrates solely on marketing, to the exclusion of actual product technology and engineering details
• Hyrum's law with a sufficient number of users of an API, it does not matter what you promise in the contract: all observable behaviors of your system will be depended upon by somebody
• Jovian relating to Jupiter or the class of giant planets to which Jupiter belongs; a hypothetical inhabitant of Jupiter
• eristic causeing disputatious, specious argument; controversial
• sagacious having keen discernment, sound judgement, and farsightedness; shrewd
• expropriate to put out of one's possession; to surrender ownership of; to deprive of possession or property rights
• capitulate surrender; give in; yield; submit; accede
• macrobiotic relating to a diet of whole pure prepared foods that is based on Taoist principles of the balance of yin and yang
• perspicacity the quality of having a ready insight into things; shrewdness
• profligacy reckless extravagance or wastefulness in the use of resources lecentious/dissolute behavior
• genuflect lower one's body briefly by bending one knee to the ground, typically in worship or as a sign of respect
• mycorrhiza symbiotic relationship between the mycelium of a fungus and the roots of a plant
• anemic lacking in vitality; listless and weak. anemia reduces the blood's ability to carry oxygen
• regolith a blanket of unconsolidated, heterogeneous superficial deposits covering solid rock
• colloid mixture in which one substance consisting of microscopically dispersed insoluble particles is suspended throughout another substance
• schlocky of inferior value; cheap; tasteless; tacky
• disconcerting hard to deal with; causing incertainty/confusion about how to act/react; tending to cause discomfort; unsettling; troubling
• pyrrhonism ancient Greek school of philosophical skepticism which rejects dogma and advocates the suspension of judgement over the truth of all beliefs
• equanimity state of psychological stability/composure undisturbed by emotions, pain, etc.
• ataraxia lucid state of robust equanimity characterized by ongoing freedom from distress/worry
• stopgap something that serves as a temporary expedient
• cargo cult indigenist millenarian belief system in which adherents perform rituals they believe will cause a more technologically advanced society to deliver goods
• phillumenism the hobby of collecting matchboxes
• homologous having the same relation, relative position, or structure
• inchoate just begun so not fully formed/developed; rudimentary
• decadent relecting a state of moral decline; luxuriously self-indulgent
• incipient in an initial stage; beginning to happen/develop
• categorematicity a categorematic expression has a denotation of its own, while a syncategorematic does not but can affect the denotation of a larger expression which contains it. syncategorematic: for any numerals n and m, the expression "n + m" denotes the sum of the numbers denoted by n and m. categorematic: the plus sign "+" denotes the addition operation.
• langue and parole Swiss linguist/semiotician/philosopher Ferdinand de Saussure's langue refers to the abstract, systematic rules/conventions of a signifying system which exist independently of any particular user; parole refers to the concrete instances of the usage of langue
• legalism excessive adherence to law/formula
• exegesis critical explanation/interpretation of a text, especially scripture
• solicitude care/concern for someone/something
• glasnost openness/transparency; freedom of information; maximum openness in the activities of state institutions and the inadmissibility of hushing up problems
• ablation the surgical removal of body tissue