solipsism

Pronounced: SOL-ip-siz-uhm, noun

Notes: I confused this word with another word dealing with logic

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Yesterday’s word

The word carpaccio means “thinly sliced raw meat or fish served with a sauce”; note that the word is usually used postpositively (after the name of the dish, as in ‘salmon carpaccio’)

First usage

Our word came into English in the 1960s (possibly the 1950s)

Background / Comments

Our word was created by a man named Guiseppe Cipriani, who ran a restaurant in Venice, Italy. He created the dish for the Countess Amalia Nani Mocenigo; he had heard that she was under doctor’s orders to eat raw meat (or, at least, avoid cooked meat). According to the restaurateur, he decided to call his invention “carpaccio” because the red in the beef matched the colors used in paintings by the Renaissance painter Vittore Carpaccio. I prefer the alternate pronunciation (the one with four syllables instead of three).