Tag: word of the week

A Wild World of Words: Lagom

by zoelance, posted in A Wild World of Words

lagom

In case you’re wondering whether or not lagom is an English word, it’s not. It might be Monday, but you’re not going crazy in regards to your language.

Lagom is a Swedish word that has no precise English translation or equivalent. It roughly means “just right” or “in moderation,” but it has neither a positive or negative connotation. It’s more of a feeling and a cultural idea. It’s also a Norwegian and Finnish word, but in those languages the word has different connotations.

I saw it on Twitter this morning and really liked it. Even though I still subscribe to the idea that meaning is constructed by language, I think it’s cool that particular words of a language either influence or are the products of the cultural identity of the people who speak it. It especially reminds me of Aristotle’s golden mean, which was a significant aspect of discussion in my literary theory class last fall. And when I look at the word, it’s a perfectly symmetrical one phonetically and orthographically. Two syllables, a beautiful “g” in the middle.

What’s your word of the week?

A Wild World of Words: Epiphenomena

by zoelance, posted in A Wild World of Words

A new weekly installation on the blog, in which I share a word for the week. 

epiphenomena

This week’s word is epiphenomena.

Epiphenomena, the plural form of the word epiphenomenon, are secondary phenomena that appear in addition to separate phenomena. A mouthful, right? So for example,  your ideas and emotions are epiphenomena of the physical activity of your brain. Your brain is primarily focused on bodily function ( a phenomena), but also holds the capacity for your memory (a secondary phenomena). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word was first used in 1706 in the sixth edition of Phillips’s New World of Words.

I saw this word for the first time today in one of my favorite newsletters, and really like the deeper meaning. Going back to the example in the previous paragraph, your ideas/emotions and physical capability of your brain are two very separate processes. But in one way, they have to coexist and interact with each other. An example I can think of is that stress can have a physical effect on the body, and that we hold it in our muscles. The epiphenomena becomes a tangled web of phenomena that has to exist, because otherwise, the separate phenomena wouldn’t be the way that they are. I might be off-base, but we wouldn’t really know the effects of stress if we didn’t see its manifestation. It seems like the word is mostly used in the worlds of medicine and psychology, but I think it still holds a weight outside of these settings.

Plus, I like saying it. E-pi-phe-nom-e-na.

Share your word-of-the-week with me in the comments.