word of the day

Poshlust.

I just started Reading Lolita in Tehran. I am already in love with it. As the title suggests, the author writes about what Lolita means to her and the small group of other Iranian women she meets with to discuss literature, and how they learn from authors such as Nabokov. In the first few pages of the book, I've already learned a great deal about him - for instance he had a form of synesthesia that added color to letters, which leads you to imagine that he painted as much as wrote his novels - enough to know he deserves far more attention than I've yet given him.

He wrote that "poshlust is not only the obviously trashy, but mainly the falsely important, the falsely beautiful, the falsely clever, the falsely attractive." To rephrase, the painfully banal dressed up, disguised to appear significant, relevant, enticing, to lure whoever can't tell the difference between real and feigned substance.

From Urban Dictionary:

Jeopardy Contestant-- "I'll take words from Russia for $600, Alex."

Alex Trebek-- "The answer is: Support Our Troops stickers on an SUV, $300 jeans made to look old, and Paris Hilton trying to be like Common People."

Winning Contestant-- "What is poshlust?"