Glossary
From the Latin for “outside the walls,” extra muros refers to the world beyond the boundaries, whether physical or intellectual, of schools, colleges, and universities.
From the Latin for “inside the walls,” intra muros refers to people ensconced, and events that occurred, within realm of formal schooling.
From the Latin for “changes having been made,” mutatis mutandis invites readers to provide for themselves the minor modifications that keep company with a major alteration. For examples, if someone writes “mutatis mutandis, I’d rather live in the city than the country, you may assume that the urban dwelling he has in mind offers more amenities than a Murphy bed and a hotplate.”
From the Greek for “self” (autos) and “teaching” (didaktikos), an autodidact is a person who has taken responsibility for the methods, direction, pace, and content of his own education.
From the Greek for “other” (alla) and “language” (glossa), an alloglot is a person who speaks a language other than his mother tongue. (When used as an adjective, alloglot means “belonging to another language.”)
A gecko’s hoard* is a collection of shiny objects that, for reasons of size or substance, fails to qualify as a dragon’s hoard.
Inspired by the French phrase lèse majesté, which describes a failure to offer due deference to a monarch, lèse diversité* occurs when the culprit declines to bend the knee before one (or more) of the great idols of our age.
Just as ‘lupine’ refers to wolfish things, and ‘vulpine’ describes the definitive qualities of foxes, the adjective musculine* brings to mind the mousiness of mice.
In the realm of theology, prelapsarian refers to the situation enjoyed by Adam and Eve before they violated the terms of their lease on the Garden of Eden. Here at Extra Muros, I employ it to describe the life led by scholars before they ran aground on the rocks and shoals of cancel culture.
Derived from sesquicentennial (a celebration of the passing of a century and a half), sesquicentury* refers to a period of a 150 years.
Shill, which seems to have come from the patois of old-timey carnival workers, has born two children. Shillsheet** describes a page that encourages addition engagement with a website, often by taking out a subscription or adding an e-mail address to a mailing list. Similarly, a shillshape** (which is also known as a shillbutton** or a shillbox**) is an activator that, when pressed, causes a shillsheet to appear.
From the French word for smile (sourire) and a suffix meaning “to make” (-ificent), we get sourificent*. (Turning the adjective into a noun gives us sourificence.*)
Often translated as ‘squadron’, a sotnia is a unit of a hundred or so Cossacks. I, however, see no reason to limit its use to the counting of the kith and kin of Tarus Bulba.
From the good old English words yore (meaning “yesterday” or “long ago”) and folk (“people), we obtain yorefolk*, which describes “people of bygone times.” Likewise, mating yore to daily provides us with yoredaily*, which comes in handy when we tire of saying things like old-timey and geezerlicious*.
The making of a portmanteau of Zoom and rendezvous yields Zoomdevous.* (One could, I suppose, also meet at a Skypedevous* or a Jamidevous.*)
Note: Expressions marked with an asterisk made their debut on Extra Muros. Those bearing two stars began their lexicographical lives on The Tactical Notebook.
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