Qareens

Qareens, according to Islamic literature, are spirits. Qareens are unique to each individual. Qareen literally means 'constant companion'. The companion can be either good or evil.

Psychomachia

The Psychomachia (Battle for Mansoul) by the Late Antique Latin poet Prudentius is probably the first and most influential "pure" medieval allegory, the first in a long tradition of works as diverse as the Romance of the Rose, Everyman, and Piers Plowman.

In slightly less than a thousand lines, the poem describes the conflict of vices and virtues as a battle in the style of Virgil's Aeneid. Christian faith is attacked by and defeats pagan idolatry to be cheered by a thousand Christian martyrs.

Augurine

Augurine is not really a word, but I think it would be a good word for the little angels and demons that appear on a character's shoulder in a cartoon to give either good or bad guidance, known as a shoulder angel. It's a portmanteau of Augur, a priest who studied omens and gave guidance, and figurine.

Dämmerung

Dämmerung:

The German word for twilight.

Verfremdungseffekt

The distancing effect (German: Verfremdungseffekt) is a theatrical and cinematic device coined by playwright Bertolt Brecht "which prevents the audience from losing itself passively and completely in the character created by the actor, and which consequently leads the audience to be a consciously critical observer." Brecht's term describes the aesthetics of his epic theatre.

The term of Verfremdungseffekt is rooted in the Russian Formalist notion of the device of making strange or "priem ostranenie", which literary critic Viktor Shklovsky claims is the essence of all art. Not long after seeing a performance by Mei Lanfang's company in Moscow in the spring of 1935, Brecht coined the German term to label an approach to theater that discouraged involving the audience in an illusory narrative world and in the emotions of the characters. Brecht thought the audience required an emotional distance to reflect on what is being presented in critical and objective ways, rather than being taken out of themselves as conventional entertainment attempts to do.

The proper English translation of Verfremdungseffekt is a matter of controversy. The word is sometimes rendered as defamiliarization effect, estrangement effect, distantiation, alienation effect, or distancing effect. In Brecht and Method, Fredric Jameson abbreviates Verfremdungseffekt as "the V-effekt"; many scholars similarly leave the word untranslated.

octopodes

British plural form of octopus.

Khoikhoi

The Khoikhoi ("people people" or "real people") or Khoi, in standardised Khoekhoe/Nama orthography spelled Khoekhoe, are a historical division of the Khoisan ethnic group, the native people of southwestern Africa, closely related to the Bushmen (or San, as the Khoikhoi called them). They had lived in southern Africa since the 5th century AD. When European immigrants colonized the area in 1652, they practised extensive pastoral agriculture in the Cape region, with large herds of Nguni cattle. The European immigrants labeled them Hottentots, in imitation of the sound of the Khoisan languages, but this term is today considered derogatory.