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Aug 18, 2009
This week's themeWords that exercise all your fingers This week's words diastrophism micropsia supplicatory adiaphorism simpatico Give a gift that ... keeps on giving, all year long A gift subscription of AWAD It takes less than a minute. 
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with Anu Gargmicropsia
PRONUNCIATION:
(my-KROP-see-uh)
MEANING:
noun:
A defect of vision in which objects appear smaller than normal.
ETYMOLOGY:
From Greek micro- (small) + -opia (vision).
NOTES:
Micropsia is often associated with migraines. It's also known as micropia.
The opposite, where objects appear larger than their actual size, is
called macropsia (also known as macropia, megalopsia, and megalopia). These
distortions in perception are also called Alice in Wonderland syndrome after
the little girl in Lewis Carroll's books who enters a hallucinogenic world.
Also see diplopia.
USAGE:
"Seated on the chill concrete, I felt a recurrence of my childhood
micropsia, a night terror I thought I'd left behind at age eleven
or twelve, in my bedroom on Dean Street: the sensation that my body
was reduced to speck size."Jonathan Lethem; The Fortress of Solitude; Doubleday; 2003. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Good and evil grow up together and are bound in an equilibrium that cannot be sundered. The most we can do is try to tilt the equilibrium toward the good. -Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)
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