"We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world." --M. Proust
Shouldn't be regrettable and not necessarily surprising you haven't encountered it, depending on what sort of stories you enjoy. Retcon = retroactive contininuity. Most commonly found in fiction serialized over a long period of time, like comic books/movies and soap operas. Describes changing or reinterpreting established in-universe "history" to accommodate an otherwise contradictory present story point - it was all a dream, in reality [villain du jour] killed Bruce Wayne's parents, I actually survived and have been in hiding until now, etc. Can be enjoyable, insulting, or anywhere in between depending on how it is executed and/or how attached the audience is to the history, so mileage may vary.
Cassowary. Visiting Florida, can only think of how Carl Hiassen understates the lunacy of this rather interesting state...I worry about some stuff at home, but not being stabbed to death by a 130 lb bird in my backyard.
Q "Why do you like Duke, you didn't even go there." A "Because my art school didn't have a basketball team."
Rather, a phrase on a sign that you might find hanging in a vacation rental: "This Way To The Beach" with the finger pointing. Urkkkk.
Nothing incites bodily violence quicker than a Duke fan turning in your direction and saying 'scoreboard.'
I have recently stumbled upon words that I have looked up multiple times throughout my life and not committed to memory.
anodyne - not likely to provoke dissent or offense; inoffensive, often deliberately so
obsequious - fawning, obedient or attentive to an excessive or servile degree
risible - provoking laughter
Intrepid was one of those words for me. Not sure why. I knew the word trepidation. Not that much of a stretch, but it eluded me for a while.
As a word, retcon is regrettable, IMO. An invention that enjoys neither grace nor wit.
As a literary phenomenon, I think of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet: a tetralogy--Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea--that sequentially builds one on another, each containing revelations not offered by its predecessors.
(As an aside, all were written in the first person except Mountolive, which was written in the third. Different tales describing the same event, all from a subjective perspective, save on. They're an interesting read.)
apropos to Mount Olive, raise your finger if you remember sports guy Ray Reeve on WRAL in the olde days touting the Mount Olive Pickle Classic with a huge, three foot imitation gherkin on the table in front of him. At least I think it was an imitation, though maybe those nukes they accidentally dropped near Goldsboro jacked up the growth rate on a real one.