A Dictionary of Bokononism

boko-maru: The mingling of awareness. A Bokononist ritual during which two people press the soles of their bare feet together. Bokononists believe it is impossible to be sole-to-sole with another person without loving that person, provided the feet of both persons are clean and nicely tended. 

busy, busy, busy: What bokononists whisper whenever they think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is. 

duffle: The destiny of thousands upon thousands of persons when placed in the hands of a stuppa. 

duprass: A karass composed of only two persons. 

dynamic tension: Theory that good societies can be built only by pitting good against evil, and by keeping the tension between the two high at all times. Derived from a theory of Charles Atlas, that muscles can be built without bar bells or spring exercisers, by simply pitting one set of muscles against another. 

foma: Harmless untruths. Lies. 

granfalloon: A seeming team that is meaningless in terms of the ways God gets things done. Textbook examples include the false karass, the Communist party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General Electric Company, the International Order of Odd Fellows and any nation anytime anywhere. 

kan-kan: The instrument that brings someone into their particular karass. 

karass: A team which unknowingly executes God's Will. Bokononists believe that all humanity is divided into such teams. 

pool-pah: Shit storm. Wrath of God. 

saroon: To aquiesce to the seeming demands of one's vin-dit. 

sin-wat: One who wants 'all' of somebody's love. 

sinookas: The tendrils of one's life. 

stuppa: A fogbound child. 

vin-dit: A sudden, very personal shove in the direction of Bokononism. 

wampeter: The pivot of a karass. Anything can be a wampeter: a tree, a rock, an animal, an idea, a book, a melody, the Holy Grail. At any given time a karass actually has two wampeters - one waxing in importance, one waning. 

wrang-wrang: A person who steers people away from a line of speculation by reducing that line, with the example of the wrang-wrang's own life, to an absurdity. 

zah-mah-ki-bo: Fate, inevitable destiny.