Today’s word might not meet a strict, scrabble (is it in the dictionary?) definition, but I found enough sites and writing using it to meet my low standards.

I came across the word on William Gibson’s blog. An interesting thought provoking, just a little bit out there blog, that Gibson has recently returned to writing.

The word is fortean. It is an adjective derived from Charles Fort’s work. Who was Charles Fort? Good question.

Fort was an early 20th century writer and researcher who coined the term teleportation while making a name for himself researching and writing on the paranormal. Today the term fortean is used to describe weird unexplainable phenomena.

The unexplainable phenomena that Gibson refers to in his blog is the vacation that apparently he and a big shot economist at Morgan Stanley believe Americans have been enjoying. A vacation from an impending economic Armageddon caused by America’s record trade deficit. I will have to look up Armageddon but it sure sounds worse than a depression.

ForteanTimes.com offers some entertaining fortean stories.