A word that sounds like something I'd make up: Facticity

- noun 1. the condition or quality of being a fact; factuality

Intrigued by Theodor Adorno's philosophy that history and culture are inextricably linked, I picked up a copy of Adorno: An Introduction by Willem van Reijen yesterday. It's so easy to languish in the aisles at Adobe Books, browsing their extensive range of titles and subjects. It's considerably more difficult to find a specific something, especially something obscure like the Cultural Philosophy of T.W. Adorno. But I found what I was looking for, even though I didn't know specifically what I was after.

In the first 14 pages, I've looked up the following words, either because I didn't know the definition at all, or because I wanted to explore the specific usage.

messianic

fin de siecle

phenomenological

leitmotif

torpidity

scientism

dialectical

teleological

immanent

untenable

ontologizing

a priori

relativism

facticity

And I used Google Translate for the following German terms:

Die Idee der Naturgeschichte = the idea of natural history

Weltbild = world view (translated as "world-picture")

Weltfremdheit = Unworldliness (translated as "ivory tower")

(The above was all made possible using technology: I downloaded a dictionary app to my phone that P recommended - it keeps a list of all the words you've looked up; and I used Safari on my phone to access Google Translate).

I think just for fun, and to help increase the likelihood of my actually learning the above words, I'll look them up in my dad's old dictionary as well...