Hodgepodge/Scholarly Words Flashcards
Narcissist
a negative word for people who are more than a little too into themselves
Iconoclastic
a person who seeks to overthrow popular ideas or institutions, which takes a certain amount of temerity
Supercilious
arrogant, haughty, patronizing
Visceral
an emotional reaction that is deep, nearly instinctive, as if experienced in the intestines of the body (a gut response)
Serendipity
the fortunate event of finding something you like even though you weren’t actively looking for it
Gemütlich
an atmosphere or feeling of warm, cozy, comfortable happiness
Iridescent
the appearance of a shining spectrum of colors
Sybarite
an individual whose life is given over to pleasure and luxury
Patina
a greenish overlay that can form on copper or bronze, also used figuratively to mean any kind of surface covering
Gnomic
a brief encapsulation of a truth, a pithy aphorism
Exegesis
a learned way to refer to a critical analysis, especially of a literary or biblical test
Polysemous
something, usually a text that has many interpretations
Dionysian
a split between the creative or intuitive force
Apollonian
alludes to critical reasoning
Iconography
the writing of images, particularly within the history of art, to refer to the study and interpretation of visual images and patterns
Historiography
an organized look at the way history comes to be written
Epistemology
a very learned word for the branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of knowledge
Hermeneutics
refers to the theory and method of interpretation, particularly of texts
Dialectics
the weighing of seemingly contradictory facts or ideas with an attempt to resolve their opposition
Postmodern
describes something that reacts against “modernism” either by reintroducing classical elements or by carrying modernist practices to an extreme
