ANONYMOU[S] is a brief series of texts submitted, read, and published anonymously, with the agreement of the author not to reveal themself.

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In 1992, I found oxyvos printed for the first time in the Oxford English Dictionary. Hidden between oxyuriasis (n.) infestation with pinworms and oyer (n.) an assize.

My call snaked its way through the walls of automation to one of the Oxford group’s statistical analysts and he confirmed his files contained no conclusions as to the dissemination of oxyvos in any slang or academic circles by way of available corpus clusters and nomenclature research.

Prefix oxy–, from the Greek, meaning sharp, acute, pointed, acidic, pungent, rise to an apex and pierce.

I could hear his machine on the other side of the phone spitting out paper and the lexicographers’ droning voice fell away as I thought about binary ones and zeros shaping our language. It seemed we had reached the semiotic inflection point.

Suffix –vos, Proto-Indo-European origins, meaning known, leaning, nourished.

He told me he would notify the typesetting team. What if there was malicious intent?

No, I said, you have been manipulated by the ghostlike whims of robotic mechanisms.

A long time ago, I learned to let the words cascade over me. I told someone about how I appreciated the reciprocation of the words.

Possible linguistic derivations including (n.) instant recognition …

Tracing backwards as an anthropologist or a coroner would do, I located oxyvos in a handful of sources published in the prior year.

First, the English-language translation of a one-man play entitled “Viscla,” written by Otto Gizi. Oxyvos likely a typo in the stead of oxygen or bravos.

“… végre megszabadulunk ezektől a testi elvárásoktól, így az emberiség láncai meglazulnak…”

(“… we are finally free of oxyvos, the chains of humanity are loosened …”)

… (n.) an epiphany quickly lost …

100,000 Hours by Lars Figment, oxyvos used as a proxy for the concept of nothingness, similar to the use of the word widget in economics:

“As consciousness reaches its own equilibrium, in absence of exogenous variables prompting positive or negative destabilization, the ego recedes into itself and hides behind the brain’s metaphysical foreskin, settling into oxyvos, a kind of floating state of para-existence, supercharged meditation, the awake-sleep-state, the tunnel to burrow into bodily rejuvenation or emotional deprivation, deliverance from the modern-day warped stasis, achievable not through removal but as the immovable center, a boulder parting flowing water on either side of its sides.”

… (adj.) to be filled with a dangerous substance …

A repeated mention occurred within a review of 100,000 Hours in Bibliophile, authored by Unnur Grímsdóttir, the afore-noted block quote centering a dissection of Figment’s argument on economic trauma and its generational biological impact manifesting in susceptibility to immobilizing diseases.

… (n.) a bad feeling …

The (Underground and Forgotten) History of Jazz used oxyvos to describe the breathing technique used by Cleveland saxophonist Frankie del Valle, specifically in his bootleg recording of Charlie Parker’s Ornithology. He had to be resuscitated.

… (adj.) the manner of a stabbing movement …

I found everything at the library. The nuns were no help. Sister Nancy said philology was a waste of time, to be a philologist was to be an ancient failure.

You should go read The Absent City, I told her.

What good would that do me? she asked.

… (n.) improper demeanor …

In our days we have stories and in the stories are words and in the words are letters and in those letters we have the organic matter for anarchy or harmony. We must track the changes like a line graph to be able to map out the trajectory of civilization. These are the schematics to the apocalypse.

Sister Nancy said she would choose her words carefully when she prayed for me.

I am a product of the mismanagement of vocabulary. My mother believed in metalinguistics. But that is not a good enough reason to name me God.

Dr. Jens smiled in front of his window. It was raining. I had to bring him my dictionary in the rain. He said neology necessitates every word be created out of emptiness. Every word is created out of silence. Every word is created out of non-existence. Every word is created to respond to linguistic decay. Every word is created to alert the world of our own intelligence. Every word is created to drum up a little bit more distance from the proletariat. Every word is photosynthesis. Every word is created like the shaping of a cloud. Every word created is another word killed. Every word is a guillotine.

… (n.) a healthy death …

I do not believe meaning is derived from origin. The resultant malleability from this conclusion is the genesis of all fiction. I will pull on this thread.

… (adj.) enlightened …

Yes, the machines could be good for something. A search through a menagerie of catalogued images led me to a newspaper article from 1986. Three young journalists investigated an abandoned house. The neighborhood heard abnormal sounds. House-sized belches and wheezing. One of the journalists brought her camera. The children had created their own world without the adults realizing it. Generations transformed and completed within the walls. Colonization, feudalism, industrialism, barbarism, and a renaissance. They recorded history like the primitives. A small picture nestled in the text showed oxyvos written on the wall in some archaic fluid. None of the other words resided in my vocabulary. These children had evolved past the need for us.

… (n.) of or causing rapid rebirth.

I desecrated my holy dictionary by cutting out page 949 and sticking it above my desk. Someday the paper will dissolve into the wall. Oxpecker gives me vertigo. I use ovine often. There is a case for the efficacy of ozonic instead of akathisiac. My syntax is completely free of owl. Etcetera, Etcetera. I do not know what to do with the rest.