Lexical Compendium

Wait... what is this? Sometimes I come across a word, phrase, idiom, quote, reference, bit of slang, person of interest, etc that either I don't know or I find amusing, interesting, etc. This is a collection of those items so that I can refer back to them in emails, texts, etc.

Recent Entries:

Tag Cloud eponymous grammar science technology television vocabulary ai acronym internet music comics software podcast slang games quote idiom entomology jargon computer-science netspeak space tipofmytongue politics movie history legal

Engels' Pause

Engels' Pause is a period during the early Industrial Revolution (1790–1840) in England in which economic productivity and GDP per capita rose significantly, but real wages for the working class stagnated or even declined. It was named after Friederich Engles and coined by Robert C. Allen.

Many have theorized that AI will bring about similar changes for today's workers.


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References:

  1. Wikipedia: Engels' Pause
  2. YouTube: Open AI Founder Sam Altman on Artificial Intelligence's Future | Exponentially - Azeem Azhar interviews OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in 2023 and brings up Engels' Pause.
  3. Aberdeen Investments: How is AI going to change the economy?

Tags: ai , jargon , eponymous , economics

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Shoe Leather

"Shoe Leather" is a bit of television/movie jargon that refers to all of the boring/procedural parts of an exchange that often get eliminated from a script.

For example, you often don't see actors answering the phone with "hello" or even saying "good-bye" before hanging up. These little exchanges don't do much to move the plot forward.

(Note: there are other definitions of this term as well to refer to an "old fashioned" process, especially in police or detective work)

The origin of the phrase seems to refer to the sound of someone walking, i.e. the sound of their shoe's leather soles hitting the ground.


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References:

  1. What is shoe leather?
  2. Your Screenplay Sucks!
  3. YouTube: Why great filmmakers HATE this in a scene.

Tags: entertainment , movies , jargon

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agnotology

Somewhat recently my brother introduced me to this word. Agnotology is the study of how ignorance is deliberately produced, particularly through the publication of inaccurate or misleading information.

This is precisely the type of word I love learning about. As of October 2025, I’ve been thinking a lot about how social media, news journalism, and even scientific publishing shape what we know -- and what we don’t.

Agnotology was coined in 1992 by Iain Boal at the request of Robert Proctor. Proctor writes about this in the postscript of his Agnotology: A Missing Term to Describe the Cultural Production of Ignorance (and Its Study)[2]:

Some time into this project I learned that there already was a word that has been used to designate the study of ignorance, albeit with a quite different slant from how we shall be using the term. Apart from being obscure and somewhat inharmonious, agnoiology has often been taken to mean "the doctrine of things of which we are necessarily ignorant" in some profound metaphysical sense. My hope for devising a new term was to suggest the opposite, namely, the historicity and artifactuality of non-knowing and the non-known-and the potential fruitfulness of studying such things. In 1992, I posed this challenge to the linguist Iain Boal, and it was he who came up with the term agnotology, in the spring of that year.

Proctor, a Professor of the History of Science at Stanford, is best known for uncovering how the tobacco industry manipulated scientific research to keep the public ignorant of its harms [3] -- a quintessential example of manufactured doubt.

I suspect he intended agnotology to be applied to the scientific realm, but I think it works nicely when thinking about this topic generally. When the Trump administration repeatedly cites false data, that's an agnogenic practice -- the deliberate creation of ignorance.

Similarly alarming, credulously contrarian Bari Weiss (founder of "The Free Press") was recently named CBS News' new editor-in-chief [5], reporting directly to CEO David Ellison (Larry Ellison’s son). Larry, meanwhile, is part of the group overseeing U.S. operations of TikTok [6] -- a platform where an astonishing percentage of young people now get their news. [7] Add to that RFK Jr.'s steady promotion of half-baked "research" [8] to push his agenda, and it feels as though we’re barreling toward a Ray Bradbury–esque dystopia -- one where ignorance isn’t accidental, but curated. (And we didn't even touch the accelerating ease of deepfake generation. [1])

I think that agnotology dovetails with another Lexicon entry: Bespoke Reality. One concept explains how ignorance is manufactured, the other how it becomes personalized. Together they describe the feedback loop of our time -- ignorance produced at scale, then force-fed to everyone in their individual feed.


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References:

  1. Vox: OpenAI’s Sora 2 is an unholy abomination
  2. Agnotology: A Missing Term to Describe the Cultural Production of Ignorance (and Its Study)
  3. Tobacco Control: "Everyone knew but no one had proof": tobacco industry use of medical history expertise in US courts, 1990-2002
  4. Wikipedia: Agnotology
  5. Independent: John Oliver skewers Paramount for hiring ‘irresponsible’ Bari Weiss to run CBS News
  6. Reuters: Lachlan Murdoch, Michael Dell, Ellison involved in TikTok deal, Trump says
  7. Pew Research Center: TikTok users’ experiences with news on the platform
  8. Scientific American: RFK, Jr., Says Tylenol Use for Circumcision Causes Autism. Here’s Why That Claim Is Flawed

Tags: vocabulary , politics , jargon

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canard

A canard is false or unfounded statement/story.

It literally comes from the French canard meaning "duck." There's a French idiom that goes "vendre un canard à moitié" and means "to sell half a duck," in other words, to swindle someone. Over time this evolved to mean something more like a "false report."

There's a second use of this word in the aviation industry where it's a bit of jargon which describes a configuration in which a small forewing is placed ahead of the craft's main wings.

In the early 1900s French aviation engineers built a plane with these small forewings that was reminiscent of a duck and they started calling these planes "avions canard."


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References:

  1. Word of the Week: Canard
  2. Wikipedia: Canard (aeronautics)
  3. Definition: canard

Tags: vocabulary , idiom , jargon , tipofmytongue

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fridging

The term fridging describes a narrative trope in which a female character is used primarily to motivate the male protagonist.[2] The female character is harmed, killed, traumatized, etc in order to catalyze the protagonist's journey -- his grief or vengeance are what propels him forward.

The term comes from the comic Green Lantern in an issue in which the hero discovers his girlfriend murdered and stuffed into a refrigerator by a villain.[3] Comics writer Gail Simone later cataloged a long list of similar cases under the project "Women in Refrigerators," and the name stuck.[4]

In November 2025 I saw the remake of the movie The Running Man.[1] The primary motivation for the main character joining the deadly game show The Running Man is that he is unable to support his wife and sick daughter. These characters are only in the movie to motivate the protagonist. The picture he keeps of them seems to get more air time than the actual characters.


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References:

  1. IMDB: The Running Man (2025)
  2. Wikipedia: Women in refrigerators
  3. Comic Vine: Green Lantern #54 - Forced Entry
  4. Wikipedia: Gail Simone

Tags: movie , jargon , comics

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inkhorn term

An inkhorn term is one that is pretentious or overly ornate (often words from Latin or Greek).

An "inkhorn" was how ink was carried by scholars and clerks in the 1500s. The metaphor suggests that such words come from the scholar’s desk rather than natural speech.

Ironically, some words which historically were derided as inkhorn terms are now rather mundane and commonplace... including the word mundane.

Example:

Sally loved to flaunt her giant vocabulary, peppering every conversation with inkhorn terms that left her friends reaching for a dictionary.


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References:

  1. Wikipedia: Inkhorn Term
  2. World Wide Words Blog: Inkhorn Terms

Tags: vocabulary , jargon

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thagomizer

A thagomizer is a bit of paleontology jargon referring to the spikes on a stegosaurian dinosaur.

When I was young, the Stegosaurus was my favorite type of dinosaur. I had no idea what the spikes were called until very recently though. I especially didn't know that the word was coined by none other than Gary Larson of Far Side fame.

In 1982, Gary Larson wrote a comic in which a caveman, perhaps in a teaching role, explains to an audience that these spikes were named "after the late Thag Simmons."


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References:

  1. Wikipedia: Thagomizer
  2. Thagomizer: Why Stegosaurus’ Spiky Tail Was Named After A Cartoon

Tags: dinosaur , stegosaurus , far side , paleontology , eponymous , comics

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tribology

Tribology is the scientific study of friction, lubrication, and wear between interacting surfaces in relative motion. It blends principles from mechanical engineering, materials science, chemistry, and physics.

The word was coined in 1966 by British mechanical engineer Peter Jost in a report to the UK government titled "Lubrication (Tribology) - A Report on the Present Position and Industry’s Needs". The word is formed from the Greek root tribos meaning rubbing.

During a trip with my brother, he told me about a tribological analysis his firm performed along with a write-up they published and this is how I was introduced to the term.

While looking up the origins of the word tribology, I thought it would fit perfect in an episode of Archer. The characters often use absurdly niche references followed by incredulity when nobody knows the reference.

[Scene: ISIS HQ hallway, someone slips slightly on a recently waxed floor]

Lana: Whoa -- can we not buff the floors like an Olympic luge track?

Archer: Who are you, Peter Jost?

Lana: Who?

Archer: Peter Jost? The father of tribology??

[Everyone stares blankly]

Archer (muttering): Seriously guys, read a book! Well, actually an obscure UK lubrication report from 1966.


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References:

  1. Definition: tribology
  2. Science Direct: tribology
  3. Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers: What is Tribology
  4. "The Invention of Tribology: Peter Jost's Contribution" - by John Williams, Robinson College, University of Cambridge
  5. IMDB: Archer

Tags: science , vocabulary , jargon , engineering

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