(Sanskrit) [Also nirvanee, nirvanin] One who enters, or has entered, nirvana. We still can’t figure out why Beat Takeshi had Iranian factory workers greeting each other with this word in the movie “minna yatteruka.” It bears further inspection.

Today’s New Word is: Applicosinox. Applicosinox made its debut about five years ago in a song recorded by Taro and I in his old juku (cram school). I made it up to fill a particular line in the song and it fit perfectly. Applicosinox is spiced wine made from apples that makes your nose itch and causes sneezing if you drink too much. On the plus side, your eyes start glowing like Dune if you drink more than a cup a day. A search for this word on Google used to return a lot more hits than it does now. In particular, I remember it being researched on a linguistics…

Well I thought of a new pursuit and went ahead with it before it escaped my memory (volatile). Now I should explain: When learning a new language, I often experience meltdown trying to think of the English equivalent of a particular word or phrase. Since I am a product of American public schools (K-12) and Japanese university, I am pretty much the stupidest, laziest, least-inclined-to-use-a-dictionary fool you will ever meet. Hence, my need to create new words, even if they already exist. OK? FAQ: Q. Can your New Words be used for free? A. No. Every spoken usage costs a beer. Every written usage costs a car (scaled to wealth…

The new word for today is “scalpulation.” Scalpulation is an answer or calculation derived by much head-scratching, chin-fondling, and mutterings of the word “Um”.