My dear wilder readers,
I found this week’s lost word and immediately thought: Oh, this one is going to get me in trouble.
Aischrolatreia
Noun | ahys-kroh-luh-trahy-uh | Early twentieth century | English
The worship of lewdness and obscenity.
Example: Nearly every online community eventually becomes overrun with aischrolatreia (Gillard).
Which, honestly, feels less like an example sentence and more like an observation somebody made after spending fifteen minutes on social media.
Even the word itself sounds indecent. It has too many syllables, rolls around in your mouth far longer than necessary, and sounds like something whispered behind a velvet curtain by a woman wearing entirely too much perfume while somebody’s respectable husband pretends he has absolutely no idea how he ended up there. Naturally, I adore it. But the thing I find most interesting about aischrolatreia isn’t really the obscenity; it’s the worship part.
Human beings have always been fascinated by the things we’re told not to look at: sex, scandal, violence, gossip, forbidden books, dirty jokes scribbled into bathroom stalls, or the neighbor arguing loudly enough that suddenly everyone on the block needs to take the trash out at exactly the same time. We pretend to avert our eyes, and then we peek between our fingers. Maybe that’s why obscenity never really disappears; we just keep changing where we hide it. Once upon a time, somebody tucked the naughty novel beneath the mattress. Now we clear our browser history. Progress.
As someone who writes about forbidden desire, bad decisions, people kissing coworkers they absolutely should not be kissing, and the occasional office door that probably should have remained unlocked, I hate to admit that aischrolatreia feels a little close to home. Not because I believe everything needs to be obscene, but because the forbidden only works when something exists on the other side of it: restraint, expectation, the rule, the closed door. That tiny voice says, You probably shouldn’t. And another one answers, But what if I did?
That space between those two voices is where some of my favorite stories live. Maybe aischrolatreia isn’t simply our attraction to dirty things, but our fascination with crossing a line and discovering what waits on the other side. Sometimes it’s scandal. Sometimes regret. Sometimes pleasure. And sometimes it’s just an unfortunately detailed comment section that should have remained unopened.
Either way, humanity has apparently been worshipping at the altar of obscenity long enough that someone felt compelled to invent a five-syllable word for it. And I think that’s beautiful. In an extremely inappropriate way.
XOXO,
Ozanna Wilder
(p.s. please use aischrolatreia in a conversation this week and report back. Bonus points if your friend quietly Googles it beneath the table.)
