In this episode, our hosts discuss the word “Suerza” – a combination of the Spanish words for luck and force: suerta and fuerza. It was coined by the author John Koenig in his book The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.

Lexicon of Life and Death is a new podcast series where Lynn and Mark Barger Elliott will explore the vocabulary we employ to express beliefs, hopes and attitudes towards life and death. While asking what it means to live a completed life, they will probe ways that language guides us towards embracing full and whole moments in our lives. As we come into the world, we inherit language to interpret and to express our experiences and emotions. Language evolves as the world changes – evidenced by the 690 new English words Merriam-Webster added to the dictionary last year. Language can also limit our abilities to interact with and to describe the world we inhabit. As the poet Jane Hirschfield once observed, as humans, we attempt to explain something that already exists fully, on its own, without words.

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