In a Word Archives - Bluedot Living

In A Word: Speciesism

Leslie Garrett — Fri, 25 Aug 2023 16:33:37 +0000

Speciesismnoun: spe·cies·ism ˈspē-shēz-ˌi-zəm Speciesism. Try to say that five times. Or once. It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it? While it might sound a bit like someone speaking with marbles in their mouth, in fact, speciesism is more about someone with a chunk of cow in their mouth, or perhaps chicken, or octopus. […]

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In A Word: Shivelight

Leslie Garrett — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 16:59:06 +0000

Shivelightnoun:ˈshīv ˈlīt Perhaps it’s been raining, and the forest smells fresh and scrubbed clean. The sun is now high in the sky, and as you venture deeper into the trees and the foliage above you thickens, you notice that the sun’s shafts slip through the canopy like glittering swords. You can picture it, can’t you? […]

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In A Word: Rewilding

Leslie Garrett — Thu, 13 Apr 2023 13:55:11 +0000

“We must rewild the world,” said none other than Sir David Attenborough, natural historian and creator of iconic nature documentaries. Which means … what exactly? I think back on a winter visit to Jackson, Wyoming, where an elk was window shopping in the town square, and to the Bangkok market where I watched a monkey […]

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In A Word: Pleniplessence

Leslie Garrett — Fri, 17 Mar 2023 19:19:35 +0000

Perhaps you’ve experienced it standing in front of a staggering number of yogurt containers, all of which look roughly the same but seem to promise not only different contents, but also different benefits and virtues. Or maybe it took you down when you were trying to select unique drawer pulls for your newly constructed home […]

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In A Word: Psychogeology

Leslie Garrett — Tue, 29 Nov 2022 19:45:44 +0000

I cannot offer you a dictionary definition of psychogeology because the word is not in the dictionary. What I can do is tell you that the author who coined the term, Kim Stanley Robinson, wanted a word to define how we are shaped by the places where we live or have spent time. Psycho, as […]

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In a Word: Micromobility

Leslie Garrett — Mon, 08 Aug 2022 14:39:24 +0000

For lots of us, talk of electric vehicles typically defaults to cars or SUVs. And yet, though there is undoubtedly an EV revolution at hand, it is being driven predominantly by smaller vehicles — e-bikes and scooters, for instance. There’s a name for this mode of transport: micromobility. Horace Dediu, a tech analyst, coined the […]

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In a Word: Radical Hope

Leslie Garrett — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 19:02:58 +0000

In the summer of 2005, I sat across a table in a restaurant with my friend. We had just heard that Canada, where we both lived, had legalized gay marriage. My friend had marched, petitioned, lobbied for many years, though he insisted he never planned to marry. “We worked so long for this,” he said. […]

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In a Word: Solastalgia

Leslie Garrett — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 18:37:10 +0000

Solastalgia: Psychological distress caused by climate change. While the word “solastalgia” might never have rolled off your tongue, you’ve likely felt its meaning deep in your bones. Solastalgia the word is a combination of the Latin sōlācium (comfort) and the Greek root -algia (pain). It’s also a play on “nostalgia” — a combination of the […]

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In a Word: Solastalgia

Bluedot Living — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 14:37:10 +0000

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In a Word: Anthropause

Leslie Garrett — Mon, 24 May 2021 21:35:55 +0000

On the heels of Oxford Languages “Word of the Year” for 2019 — “climate emergency” — comes a COVID-inspired collection of words for 2020, including “anthropause.” Anthro = human. Pause = interrupt action. Anthropause was coined by researchers seeking to describe the lull in global human activity, which, in some cases, allowed wildlife to move […]

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