2015 Words of the Year: Afangar, meliorism, xenia, syzygy

This year a lot of vocabulary made the Sensorium. Themes were compassion, effective altruism, art and space.

Viðey island, Iceland

• meliorism — the belief that through small, generous actions the world can be made better 
• Áfangar — to stop and look forward and back — as in an outdoor art sculpture exhibit on Viðey island, Iceland
• plutonion — a sanctuary
• post-coital tristesse — sadness after sex, when you want to cry with compassion for the world 
• hoodoo — aka tent rock, fairy chimney, earth pyramid: a tall, thin spire of rock that protrudes from the bottom of a dry basin or badland from NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day
• xenia — compassion as a characteristic of heroes 
• syzygy — a conjunction or opposition, especially of the moon with the sun i.e. the planets were aligned in syzygy as in Hugo Award Winning novel The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu

A highlight of the year was learning that the Sensorium is an electronic, COMMONPLACE BOOK at Ann Hamilton's exhibit Common Sense at the Henry Art Gallery.

What is this? My Year in Review.