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Identity & Belief
(v.)
To skim just enough information about a topic to believe you are fully informed about it.
A morning of glanceglossing five unrelated topics was enough for him to form strong opinions on all of them.
Does it ring true?
From the future, or already here?
Glance + gloss, where gloss has a double meaning: the shine (from the Old High German glosen ), and to gloss over. An alternate meaning for gloss comes from the Greek word glōssa describing an obscure or obsolete word. By the mid-14th century, a collection of these words (glosses) was known as a glossary. The gloss used to be where understanding lived; now it is replaced with a “shiny” confidence, but without the same depth.
Future Words: A Non-Obvious Glossary of Terms That Don’t Exist (But Soon Will) collects all 100, each with its example sentence and coinage notes, from the bestselling authors of The Future Normal. Hardcover, October 20, 2026.