mezangelle
n.— «The syntactical notation is taken from wildcards and regular expressions in programming languages and Unix command line interpreters forming an archetypical world. In mez’s own language “mezangelle,” it is called “Arch.E.typal T[Claims of the n]ext W[h]orl.d,” expanding into hardware/software architectures—“arch” in computer tech lingo—, “claims of the next world,” and whores. Slang and sexual language exposes mezangelle as a messy code, one that does not run on machines, but on a human imagination that encompasses machines and bodies alike. Unlike in the Steven Seagal action movie and the Voynich Manuscript, the semantic associations are not superimposed and therefore external to the code, but are embedded into the code proper.» —“Words Made Flesh: Code, Culture, Imagination: Chapter 2 Computations of Totality by Florian Cramer” by Isaac Darien Neuromedia (Atlanta, Georgia) May 3, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
In the 15th century, the word respair meant “to have hope again.” Although this word fell out of use, it’s among dozens collected in a new book of soothing vocabulary for troubled times. Plus, baseball slang: If a batter...
Joan from Augusta, Georgia, says her grandfather used to pronounce the word onions as if they were spelled ernions. The word onion is adapted from the French cognate oignon, and thanks to variations in dialect, geography, and other factors, this...