July 14th, 2008

Mamihlapinatapai, a most succinct word

It describes a look shared by two people with each wishing that the other will initiate something that both desire but which neither one wants to start. This could perhaps be translated more succinctly as “eye-contact implying ‘after you…’”. A more literal approximation is “ending up mutually at a loss as to what to do about each other”.

Mamihlapinatapai on Wikipedia

via kottke via cyn-c

Loading tweets...

@timhackbarth

The sub-par, yet slowly improving missives of Tim Hackbarth, man about town in Austin, TX.