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 [kal-uh-pij-ee-uhn]
Full disclosure: I came by this word via unconventional means, and I’m just now in the process of putting it into my vernacular. But(t) I am very taken with it, nonetheless.
I do feel it’s most useful application will be in talking about someone behind their back right in front of their face. Or, rather about their behind right in front of their face.
It did set me thinking a bit about why, perhaps, this word doesn’t enjoy widespread usage. I am admittedly at a loss to come up with an example of a word that obliquely refers to any particular trait in such fashion. Certainly we have a host of adjectives to refer to a person entire, or to describe a body part explicitly named but I can’t think of an example which does so without further explication.
Perhaps it is a linguistic consequence of a moral imperative: to see and accept people in their entirety rather than piecemeal. To take the firm jaw with the Roman nose. The curve of the throat in concert with the decolletage…
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