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Mikhail Epstein's definitions

EGG

abbreviation for Electronically Generated Groups, such as smart mobs
or bookcrossing communities, that use the web to ferment their social
bonds in real space and time.
These EGGs are indeed the eggs of new, trans-electronic sociality.

Do you participate in any EGG? - Yes, I am a seasoned egger.
by Mikhail Epstein October 2, 2003
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ride the edge

to be ahead in a certain skill or profession, to be on a cutting edge and take all the risks of being the first and leading the others
A recent graduate in quantum physics, Amalia now rides the edge of nanotechnology.
by Mikhail Epstein November 6, 2003
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defriend

defriend smbd v , transitive de + friend; cf. befriend - to break off friendly relations (with smbd).
He defriended me a year after we met, with no reason or explanation. He just stopped calling, period.

I want to defriend you. Ð What's wrong? - I need something more than friendship from you. I need love.
by Mikhail Epstein November 2, 2003
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chronocide

chronocide n (Gr. khronos, time + Lat. cidum, from caedere, to slay; cf. genocide, homicide, parricide) - the murder of time, the violent interruption of historical succession and continuity.
Any revolution is a form of chronocide: the past and present are sacrificed to the future. Any counterrevolution is also a chronocide: the present and the future are sacrificed to the past.

Communism is a chronocide: it destroys the tradition in its leap to the ungrounded future.

Fascism is a chronocide: it brings the society under the spell of the archaic past.
by Mikhail Epstein November 9, 2003
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inventurer

inventurer n (invention+adventurer) - adventurer of thinking, seeker of intellectual adventures.
Inventurers know how much they donÕt know; like Socrates and Kant, they start their journey with the confessed Òignorance
by Mikhail Epstein November 6, 2003
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chronosome

chronosome n (Greek khronos, time + Greek soma, body; cf. chromosome) Ð a unit of historical heredity, in contrast with a chromosome as a unit of biological heredity; a mental code of a historical period that is transmitted to next generations through styles, traditions and unconscious influences ("cultural air").
The chronosomes of the early 20th c. avant-garde have reached the generation of the 1960s and shaped its political views and artistic styles.

Nabokov's novel "Invitation to a Beheading" bears many Kafka's chronosomes, even if the author claims to have never read Kafka.
by Mikhail Epstein November 13, 2003
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ambipathy

ambipathy n (Latin, Greek ambi- (or amphi), both, on both sides + Greek pathos, feeling) - a mixture of sympathy and antipathy, of attraction and repulsion; a condition of being torn apart by conflicting feelings and aspirations.
"... At once I hate and love as well," - this line by Catullus, Roman poet of the first century BC, is one of the first literary expressions of ambipathy.

Dmitry Karamazov in Dostoevsky says that "a man is too broad" and is equally attracted by the two abysses--the upper and the lower ones, the ideal of Madonna and the ideal of Sodom. In this sense, Dmitry and perhaps Dostoevsky himself are the brightest manifestations of this common trait of ambipathy.
by Mikhail Epstein November 6, 2003
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