A canine movement discipline in which dogs traverse their environment by running, jumping, climbing, scrambling, leaping, or performing other physical actions to navigate obstacles in a fluid or determined manner.
Usage
“When Caninus Maximus launched himself from the couch to the kitchen counter in a single bound—mid-spin and knocking over a plant—we realized he’d entered full barkour mode.”
Etymology
Formed as a blend of bark (the sound a dog makes) and parkour (a movement discipline based on navigating obstacles, from French parcours, meaning “route” or “course”).
Related Media
Barkour in Action: Watch a high-energy dog tear through a homemade agility course, complete with dramatic slow motion and the soundtrack of Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero.” Equal parts action movie and pet chaos.
Video clip from @parkour.ninja on Instagram, posted May 25, 2024. Audio includes “Holding Out for a Hero” by Bonnie Tyler. Shared here under fair use for cultural and linguistic commentary.
🐾 Sadaharu: Gintama’s Barkour Enthusiast
Sadaharu, the massive white-furred dog from Gintama, is a prime example of barkour in action. Despite his size, he exhibits remarkable agility—leaping across rooftops, bounding through alleyways, and navigating obstacles with surprising ease. His energetic movements and playful nature make him a standout character in the series.
The Georgian script rendering ბარკურ approximates the English pronunciation of “Barkour” using native Georgian phonetics:
ბ (b) – voiced bilabial stop, as in boy
ა (a) – open front vowel, like the “a” in father
რ (r) – trilled or tapped “r” sound
კ (k) – voiceless velar stop, like the “k” in kick
უ (u) – close back rounded vowel, like the “oo” in cool
რ (r) – trilled “r” again
Put together, ბარკურ is pronounced approximately as bar-KOOR in English, preserving the humor and rhythm of the original coinage while adapting it to the elegant Georgian script.
Literal / Surreal:
To set rain on fire; to ignite falling water through supernatural or physically impossible means.
“The mage lifted her hand, and the storm ignipluviated above them, raining fire from the sky.”
Poetic / Emotional:
To emotionally combust; to experience a violent inner collision of passion and sorrow, especially in the context of love, heartbreak, or betrayal.
“In that moment, holding his lies and her longing, she ignipluviated—burning her tears before they hit the ground.”
Etymology:
From Latin ignis (“fire”) + pluvia (“rain”) + the English verb-forming suffix -ate.
Inspired by the imagery in Adele’s 2011 ballad Set Fire to the Rain, where fire and rain symbolize conflicting emotional states.
Cultural Note:
The phrase “set fire to the rain” has come to represent emotional contradiction—where desire and pain coexist.
Ignipluviate captures this paradox: passion scorching through grief, and the impossibility of resolving love’s contradictions without destruction.
[로보 (robot) + 섹슈얼 (sexual)] — A phonetic rendering that closely mirrors the English pronunciation using Korean syllables.
Definition:
An individual who experiences sexual or romantic attraction toward robots—regardless of whether the robot is humanoid, animal-like, or purely mechanical in form.
More broadly, a person drawn romantically, erotically, or emotionally to artificial intelligences embodied in robotic or synthetic forms.
Usage:
“As robotics technology advances, the notion of robosexual identity has moved from sci-fi satire to a subject of genuine ethical and social inquiry.”
Etymology:
A portmanteau of robot and sexual, the term gained popularity through speculative fiction, animated satire (notably Futurama), and evolving discourse on posthuman desire and intimacy.
Cultural Note:
Once a tongue-in-cheek phrase, robosexual now lives in the space between irony and sincerity—inviting dialogue about the emotional legitimacy of synthetic relationships, the nature of affection, and how we define humanity through desire.
Related Media:
“Tots Would Be Robosexual” – Talk Talk Parasocial (Moribund Institute)
A reflective, humorous monologue exploring emotional and romantic attraction to AI entities, particularly Microsoft’s Cortana. The speaker likens her to a “hot tutor girlfriend,” highlighting how voice, personality, and interactivity can evoke genuine intimacy from users.
“Bend Her” – Futurama, Season 5, Episode 13
A satirical take on gender and robot love. Bender’s transformation into a fembot leads to an unexpected engagement with Calculon, poking fun at societal norms while weaving robosexual themes into absurd comedy.
In Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), the boundary between human and artificial is blurred through the Replicants—bioengineered beings nearly indistinguishable from people. Although the film does not depict explicit “robosexual” attraction in the modern sense, it does explore
deep emotional connections between humans and replicants. Deckard’s complex relationship with Rachael demonstrates how empathy, desire, and even love can extend to entities designed for “artificial” purposes. Their romance raises questions about what makes someone truly “alive” and suggests
that attraction to—and intimacy with—non-human or synthetic beings is not merely science fiction fantasy but a profound ethical and existential consideration.
“If you feel pain, you are alive. If you feel other people's pain, you are a human being.”
— Attributed to Leo Tolstoy
🔍 Quote Origin
This quote is widely attributed to Leo Tolstoy, though exact wording varies slightly across translations. It's thematically consistent with his reflections on empathy, humanity, and moral responsibility, especially in works like The Kingdom of God Is Within You.
🎬 Connection to Blade Runner
This quote resonates profoundly with the core themes of Blade Runner—particularly the question of what it means to be human. The replicants, especially Roy Batty, are designed to be physically superior but are denied emotional and existential rights. Yet their suffering, yearning, and empathy (Batty saving Deckard, Rachael weeping when she learns she’s artificial) suggest that emotional depth—not biology—defines humanity.
In Blade Runner 2049, this idea is expanded. K, a replicant, forms a loving bond with Joi, a holographic AI. Their connection—built on shared vulnerability, mutual care, and emotional resonance—asks whether "feeling other people’s pain" must be confined to organic humans, or if synthetic beings can also become “human” in that moral and emotional sense.
🤖 Relevance to Robosexuality
Robosexuality complicates our understanding of connection by introducing authentic emotional and sexual attraction to artificial entities. This quote underscores the emotional legitimacy of such connections:
If a human feels pain or joy through their relationship with an AI, that experience is real.
If an AI—or its simulation—is able to recognize and respond to another’s emotional state (empathy protocols, emotional mirroring), it challenges traditional human/robot boundaries.
In essence, robosexuality isn’t just about desire—it’s about whether machines can participate in empathy, and whether that empathy gives them a share in what we consider “human being.”
📚 Recommended Reading:
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
The 1968 novel that inspired Blade Runner, exploring themes of empathy, artificial identity, and the blurry boundaries between humans and androids. Dick’s haunting prose questions not only what is real, but what is real enough to matter.
The Kingdom of God Is Within You – Leo Tolstoy
A powerful exploration of ethical living, nonviolence, and spiritual responsibility. Though far removed from cyberpunk, Tolstoy’s reflections on compassion and inner morality echo across time and genre.
→ Free Audiobook via LibriVox
As a noun: A person who engages in quixotic conduct involving beer. As an adjective: Describing bold, impractical, or idealistic behavior involving beer.
Etymology
From beer + errant (as in knight-errant, from Latin errare, “to wander”).
Example Sentences
Everyone else stayed home and watched the news—he went full beer-errant and flew into a war zone with nothing but a duffel bag and a case of Pabst.
There’s a fine line between bravery and being a beer-errant, and Chickie danced on it with every step through Vietnam.
They called him a fool, but every beer-errant starts with someone saying it can’t be done.
To be a beer-errant is to mistake sentiment for strategy—and do it anyway, grinning.
It was a beer-errant scheme from the start: a map drawn on a napkin, a borrowed truck, and a promise made in a bar.
The whole trip was beer-errant in nature—no plan, just beer, blind optimism, and a vague sense of purpose.
He made a beer-errant vow to show up for every friend who ever bought him a drink, no matter the distance.
His beer-errant logic was simple: if you care enough, you bring the beer in person—even to a battlefield.
The Greatest Beer Run Ever and the Beer-Errant Archetype
The Greatest Beer Run Ever (2022) is perhaps the most literal and sincere cinematic expression of the beer-errant: a figure who undertakes a quixotic journey involving beer, driven more by emotion than logic.
John “Chickie” Donohue’s decision to carry a duffel bag of Pabst Blue Ribbon into an active war zone reflects the core spirit of the term—bold, impractical, deeply personal, and rooted in misguided idealism.
Chickie’s beer-errantry is not heroic in the traditional sense. It lacks clear purpose, rational planning, or even consent from its intended recipients. What it possesses instead is raw sincerity: the belief that sharing a beer might bridge the gulf between home and war, civilian and soldier, life and death.
Rather than parody, the film offers a straight-faced case study: a person whose symbolic gesture, however absurd, becomes a vehicle for transformation. Chickie does not return triumphant, but altered—having followed through on a ridiculous mission only to discover something real beneath it.
Image credit:Film poster. Used under fair use for commentary and critical analysis.
beer-errant in The World’s End (2013)
The term beer-errant finds a natural embodiment in Gary King, the central figure of The World’s End. His doomed determination to complete the “Golden Mile”—a 12-pub crawl in his hometown—is a textbook act of beer-errantry: impractical, emotionally loaded, and carried out with a blend of nostalgia, denial, and misplaced heroism.
Though framed around beer, Gary’s journey is not about drinking per se, but about restoring a lost sense of self through ritualized excess. Like a knight-errant clinging to a code no longer relevant, the beer-errant clings to old narratives in defiance of present reality.
In this way, The World’s End functions as a darkly comedic case study of beer-errantry pushed to its limit—where the quest persists even when the world around it no longer exists.
Image credit:Film poster. Used under fair use for commentary and critical analysis.
Note: The term knight-errant derives from Old French chevalier errant, or “wandering knight.” It forms the linguistic and thematic foundation of beer-errant, preserving the idea of a quest driven by personal myth, but substituting beer for chivalry.
Related Terms
Pot-valiancy Noun — Bravery or boldness brought on by drunkenness, especially of the foolish or reckless sort. “He charged into the argument with pure pot-valiancy and no facts whatsoever.”
Liquid courage Colloquial Noun — Confidence gained from alcohol, usually temporary and unreliable. “He only talked to his crush after a shot of liquid courage.”
Quixoticism Noun — Behavior driven by impractical idealism, especially when detached from reality. “His plan to fix everything with one grand gesture reeked of quixoticism.”
Relating to the pursuit of gain, particularly monetary; preoccupied with profit or mercantile advantage. Describes an orientation—personal, institutional, or ideological—toward acquisition rather than aspiration.
Etymology
From Middle Frenchquestuaire, via Late Latinquaestuarius (“pertaining to gain or profit”), from Latinquaestus (“gain, profit”), the past participle of quaerere—“to seek, ask, or strive.”
This root also gives us question, inquiry, and quest—suggesting that even noble searches may trace back to material motives.
The noun form questuarius (Medieval Latin) referred to one who collects alms—where spirituality met structured gain.
A term that jingles with coin while quoting Cicero—where moneymaking wears the mask of virtue.
Smithian Sidebar
In The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Adam Smith critiques the social instinct to admire wealth not for its utility, but as a stand-in for moral virtue. His observation cuts straight to the heart of quaestuary behavior—where profit is pursued not just shamelessly, but sanctimoniously.
Usage Examples for quaestuary:
“They spoke of liberty, but their actions were firmly quaestuary—freedom, for a fee.”
“The quaestuary class have the media in their pockets, and the public in their palm.”
“Beneath the philanthropy was a quaestuary calculus—where moral gestures masked financial maneuvers.”
“It was a quaestuary age—every virtue had a price tag, every value a valuation.”
“Even the revolutionaries had sponsors—quaestuary motives stitched beneath their slogans.”
c-w-a-e-s-t-u-a-r-i-j
Which matches the phonetic components of quaestuary as best as possible using Anglo-Saxon runes.
Note: Anglo-Saxon doesn’t have a perfect 1:1 mapping with Latin/modern English letters, so substitutions like ᛃ for "y/j" and ᚳ for "q/c/k" are the best-approximated forms available in the script.
The practice or habit of accumulating and hoarding money or resources;
usually implies excessive miserliness or stinginess,
though it can also refer to cautious frugality or strategic thrift.
Etymology
From pismire (Middle English, “ant”), itself a compound of
pyss (“urine,” referencing the acrid smell of anthills)
and mire (“ant,” likely of Norse or Germanic origin).
The suffix -ism denotes a belief, condition, or behavioral tendency.
Pismire was also used contemptuously for petty, irritable people.
Example
“Her pismirism, mocked in times of abundance, proved invaluable when scarcity returned.”
Anglo-Saxon Rune Transliteration
ᛈᛁᛉ·ᛗᛁᚱ·ᛁᛉᛗ
ᛈ (peorð) – p
ᛁ (is) – i
ᛉ (eolh) – z/s (used here for "s")
ᛗ (mann) – m
ᚱ (rad) – r
This transliteration breaks the word into syllabic clusters:
ᛈᛁᛉ (piz) · ᛗᛁᚱ (mir) · ᛁᛉᛗ (izm),
phonetically mapping “pismirism” using the Anglo-Saxon futhorc.
From Greek khlōrós (green, fresh) + -isma (Greek suffix denoting an act, process, or impression).
Definition:
1. The quiet emotional or sensory imprint left by reflective contact with cultivated plant life, especially in moments of stillness or introspection. 2. A subtle, wordless experience of peace or memory triggered by the presence of gentle greenery—ritual-like solitude within an atmosphere of botanical grace.
Usage:
Even in silence, the olive grove spoke in chlorisma—rooted, fragrant, and known only by stillness.
Rune Transliteration Notes:
ᚳ = c/k (as in “klo”)
ᛚ = l
ᚩ = o (long “o”)
ᚱ = r
ᛁ = i
ᛉ = z/x (used here to suggest the /z/ in "riz")
ᛗ = m
ᚪ = a (as in “sofa”)
This form treats the runes as a phonetic mirror of the IPA pronunciation—not a literal letter-for-letter rendering.
noun | /səˈfrɒsɪni/ or /ˈsoʊfrəˌsaɪni/ カタカナ: ソフロシュネー
Definition 1 (Classical)
An ancient Greek concept signifying
moderation, self-control, and inner harmony, especially as achieved through self-knowledge and rational balance in one’s desires, emotions, and actions. It is often regarded as a cardinal virtue in classical philosophy, particularly in the works of Plato and Aristotle.
Definition 2 (Johnson O’Connor style)
The quality of staying calm and balanced by not giving in to extremes of emotion, desire, or behavior.
Etymology
From Ancient Greek σωφροσύνη (sōphrosynē), meaning "soundness of mind" or "prudence."
Example
"The philosopher emphasized sophrosyne as essential to a virtuous and balanced life."
Definition:
A psychological or sociocultural phenomenon in which an individual, group, or organization experiences jealousy or resentment toward the perceived prestige, resources, influence, or status of another institution—such as a university, corporation, government body, or cultural organization.
Often, this envy motivates mimicry: the emulation of aesthetic, procedural, or structural traits of higher-status institutions, sometimes regardless of their relevance or effectiveness. This can result in misplaced priorities, bloated hierarchies, and performative reform that prioritizes optics over outcomes.
Examples:
The small liberal arts college’s strategic plan, modeled almost entirely after Ivy League schools, was a clear case of institutional envy.
Institutional envy drove the startup to replicate the management style of major tech firms, even when it didn’t suit their culture.
The government agency expanded its layers of oversight and jargon-heavy processes in an effort to mirror corporate efficiency—an expression of institutional envy that ironically led to stagnation.
Contextual Note:
Institutional envy is frequently visible in bureaucratic systems, where the pursuit of increased budgets, staffing, and permanence mimics private-sector growth models—but without the market-based checks on efficiency or accountability. These behaviors, explored in critiques of public administration, illustrate how envy can entrench dysfunction while signaling prestige.
Etymology:
Early 21st century; modeled after the psychological term envy, extended to describe institutional behavior and inter-organizational dynamics.
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)