wasm
n.— «“Isms” have long since become “wasms,” no longer capable of explaining the rapidly changing ideas and intentions of 20th-century art. Stephen Little’s Isms: Understanding Art… is, therefore, deeply unfashionable. It also stretches a point since he begins with the Renaissance, and sustains several injuries by straining to find “isms” everwhere. Ghastly neologisms result, perspectivisim and allegoricism among them.» —“Art: Reputations in the frame” by Frank Whitford Times (London, Eng.) Nov. 28, 2004. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
How do social media algorithms shape the way we communicate? A new book argues that the competition for clicks is changing the way we speak and write, from the so-called “YouTube accent” to the surprising evolution of the word preppy. Also: A...