English language needs *iktsuarpok*

Iktsuarpok: an Inuit word more useful to us citizens of the digital universe than umpteen expressions for varieties of snow.

Here’s how the blogsite Mental Floss characterizes the expression:

“You know that feeling of anticipation when you’re waiting for someone to show up at your house and you keep going outside to see if they’re there yet? This is the word for it.”

And it occurs to me that iktsuarpok might enrich modern English, where it could just as easily refer to obsessive checking of e-mail and Facebook to see whether anyone’s contacted you in the past 30 seconds. Even the traditional Inuit did it, eh? Social networking and our obsessive-compulsive dipping for dopamine rools.

Thanks to Rick @ RickStory for permission to use his great drawings. 

Thanks to Bill the Mathematician for sending me to Mental Floss, which cites Adam Jacot de Boinod’s book The Meaning of Tingo and Other Extraordinary Words from Around the World.

 

 

 

 

 

5 thoughts on “English language needs *iktsuarpok*”

  1. This is exactly what I am feeling right now! I was obsessively checking my blog statistics; impatiently hoping for more visitors. A Colin Piprell copied a Tupilak picture from my blog which he used for a piece about an Inuit term for obsessively checking our digital devices. IKTSUARPOK!!!

    • Hah! The expression’s utility soon proven. Nice.

      I’ve been reviewing your website, and find it fascinating. Plan to revisit tomorrow. (One problem, your Blogger site is rendered in Thai on my machine, which, given my poor command of the language, makes it even more mysterious.)

  2. Yes, I did notice the link. Thank you. I shouldn’t worry about the language on my Blogger site; it’s all about the images anyway! Will subscribe to your blog, always intrigued by a fellow reality shifter.

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