A sphexish jabroni with sanpaku eyes: your vocabulary words for the day

I've been reading most of my life, and like to think that I have a decent vocabulary, but always get kind of a charge when I come across an unfamiliar word, particularly an odd or useful one. Recently I've come across three that were new to me, all of them, as it happens, in comments to blogs and Substacks that I read.

Sanpaku

This universally comes in the form "sanpaku eyes", which is how I saw it, in a comment to a photograph on Shorpy, a site that restores and enhances old photographs of the United States, a daily visit for me. In this case, the photograph was Dandy Duffers: 1900, and the comment referred to someone sitting on a fence rail as having sanpaku eyes.

This is the character in question:

Labeled with a term he could never have known

Sanpaku is a Japanese term and means "three whites", where the white of the eye, or sclera, is more visible than average, either above or below the iris. In medicalese that's called "scleral show". The pop culture figure easiest to see it in is Billie Eilish:

The celebrity most often used to illustrate sanpaku eyes

This is just a cosmetic feature, but there is no random feature that someone doesn't turn into a way to rank and judge people. Japanese face reading has all sorts of ways of telling you your fate from sanpaku eyes, though, like most such superstitions, it's inconsistent, so you can pick the fate you want.

I'm unlikely to use this term, even to describe a character's appearance, because I'd have to explain it, and that takes all the fun out of it. Unless they are then sclera-shamed by some other character, in which case it becomes yet another skirmish in the battle against ridiculous and sometimes harmful folk beliefs.

Sphexish

I found this is a comment to the Astral Codex Ten post Highlights From The Comments On Mentally Ill Homeless People, which is itself a follow-on to the post Details That You Should Include In Your Article On How We Should Do Something About Mentally Ill Homeless People.

Both, incidentally, are well worth reading, particularly if you are interested in urban issues. They are about demanding specific policy proposals for specific problems, in this case homelessness, specifically in San Francisco. What are you actually going to do? He is particularly amusing on what, exactly, getting "tough" actually means. And many of Alexander's commenters respond to his demands with actual specifics, not that common in a world where vibes are only product politically active people seem to either want to generate or consume.

Commenter CSW, a former public defender, about commitment hearings for mentally ill homeless people, discussed the amount of time it takes to deal with someone in that condition:

It was not uncommon to have hours worth of conversations with clients who had fixed delusionary beliefs, sphexishly returning to non sequiturs, and/or severe problems with logic and memory.

"Sphexish", what a delightful word. It refers to the repetitive actions of digger wasps (genus Sphex), and apparently came into usage via cognitive scientists Daniel Dennnett and Douglas Hofstadter. Though apparently the initial story underrates actual digger wasp behavior (there is no satisfying illustrative anecdote that is absolutely true as stated), the word has come to be used for repetitive behavior that shows a lack of self-reflection, and thus a certain lack of consciousness.

Jabroni

This is more slang than a word that delineates a previously vague concept. It seems to have been associated with Dwayne Johnson, The Rock, and just an insult to refer to a dumb person you feel contemptuous of. Probably more detail than you need. Though it comes from pro wrestling, and refers to some kind of apprentice wrestler whose job it was to lose to the talent, it doesn't seem to have much specificity to its meaning. It just has a nice jerky lilt to it.

I found it in a comment to this thoughtful analysis of the disaster of NYC congestion pricing: The Death of NYC Congestion Pricing, by Joey Politano, on his blog Apricitas Economics, which is generally interesting, though I read it mostly for housing and transportation issues.

The comment, by Edward Williams, was about problems facing the LA Metro, which Williams feels is actually pretty good. One of the problems he sees is:

public safety on trains and buses - every time a bus driver or passenger is assaulted, the LA times trots out the same nonprofit jabronis that say that the solution is free fares or jobs or whatever.

Politano liked the comment, and I do too. Safety on public transportation is key to wider use by a wider range of people, many poor and needing to get to work, childcare, and the grocery store, and those who oppose the effective enforcement of public safety laws are the common enemies of all transportation users, their motivations more about their own egos than about anything that actually benefits anyone. And free fares, in an attempt to solve an almost nonexistent problem without actually doing anything, cause a range of other real problems.

But "jabroni", pleasing though it is, will never been in my own insult dialect. I'll always worry I'm using it with a slight but distinct accent, as in "You are a sphexish jabroni with sanpaku eyes".