Dark Lexicon

CLEO writes These words—insidious, sinister, pernicious—linger like the dark parts of our histories, like wounds that never fully heal. Insidious comes from the Latin insidiae, meaning ambush, and it’s the kind of harm you cannot see until it’s too late. It slips into your life, unnoticed at first, only to reveal itself when it’s already done its damage. Sinister comes from the Latin sinister, meaning “on the left side,” historically seen as a sign of bad luck or misfortune. Sinister is the atmosphere in a room before something catastrophic happens, the silence before the storm. And pernicious, from pernicies, meaning destruction, is the kind of harm that accumulates, quietly, like rot. It wears away at you, not all at once, but bit by bit, until one day you look around and realize that nothing is as it was before.