{"id":12323,"date":"2008-10-31T08:30:19","date_gmt":"2008-10-31T08:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wordswarm.net\/dictionary\/chiasma.html"},"modified":"2008-10-31T08:30:19","modified_gmt":"2008-10-31T08:30:19","slug":"chiasma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2008\/10\/31\/chiasma.html","title":{"rendered":"Chiasm"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"width\"><font face=\"arial,helvetica\">An intersection or crossing of two tracts in the form of the letter X.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I do not know if it is a recent trend, but lately I have noticed the use of -asm and -gasm as suffixes for consumer products. Last week I spotted a store called &quot;Shoegasm,&quot; and a few months ago a wine bar called &quot;Winegasm&quot; opened in my neighborhood.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I guess sex and sexuality pervade our society just enough to allow sexual climax to be associated with seemingly non-sexual products. Shoes and wine are one thing, but where are we a society if flour and wheat are to come with sexual climax suffixed to them?<\/p>\n<p>I understand the joke, of course, even if I am not one to publicly express sensual delight over something like footwear or alcoholic imbibement. Food and clothing are, to me, not sources of pleasure but basic requirements for staying alive.<\/p>\n<p>I think the first time I was introduced to the word &quot;orgasm&quot; in a seemingly non-sexual context was in a discussion about the movie &quot;The Wild Bunch,&quot; directed by Sam Peckinpah. The violence in that film was described as &quot;orgasmic,&quot; a term which I have also heard in other places, such as discussion of guns in the movie &quot;Taxi Driver&quot; and in talk of Jackson Pollock&#8217;s &quot;action&quot; paintings.<\/p>\n<p>None of this has any bearing on &quot;Chiasm,&quot; and no connection to that word is expected. As with most words on this Word of the Day, I chose it because I liked how it sounded, not for its meaning. <\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An intersection or crossing of two tracts in the form of the letter X. &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whats-the-word","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/saumAn-chiasma","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}