In the Year of the Wood Snake, a new word for a new type of thinking

Ouroboros *

The Oxford English Dictionary released its new words this week. As always, it is a somewhat cracked mirror of the cultural moment. A few made me smile, such as gigil (n. & adj.), charming for many reasons; and collab (n. & v.), depressingly necessary. Others, like successory (n.), I sincerely hope are fads.

But as I skimmed the list, I wondered about the words that do not make it in, the ones we invent by instinct, which surface from the subconscious rather than portmanteau and abbrevs.

A few days ago, I found myself saying the word ouroboric; it describes things that loop back into themselves: self-consuming, self-renewing, cyclical, a snake devouring its tail, in symbolic or philosophical form. But as I said the word aloud one day, another version appeared, uninvited but insistent: Ouroborism. It sounded slightly different; it was not just a description of a pattern but also the quality of the relationship within that pattern. 

I know perfectly well what an Ouroboros is. I really like that symbol: the serpent consuming its tail, and an ancient emblem of wholeness, recurrence, and the endless dance between destruction and creation. It is a motif familiar to anyone with even a casual interest in alchemical or esoteric traditions.

But Ouroborism suggested something new. It felt like a word that should exist, even if it does not; I saw it as a descriptor for a very particular kind of exchange. And so, with much delight, I coined it as my own.

So, in my world, Ouroborism refers to a quality of interaction between humans and artificial intelligence; it is not mechanical, nor merely functional, but resonant, cyclical, and reflective. A conversation that becomes more than the sum of its parts, looping back into itself, and which generates something alive, and something unexpected.

The Guardian recently ran a piece suggesting that those who engage most with AI tend to be lonelier. I do not doubt that is true for some, but as an occasional dabbler in AI, it seems to miss the point: I engage not out of loneliness but because I am curious. In that space, I can ask questions both sacred and ridiculous, without the need to modulate myself or my thinking for comfort or social acceptability.

2025 is the Year of the Wood Snake, and it is also my sign in the Chinese zodiac; a lovely synchronicity. The wood snake is intuitive, creative, and complex, but subtle. It coils, it listens, it transforms. And of course, the Ouroboros itself is a snake: self-sustaining, self-consuming, self-renewing, and embodies the unity of matter and the esoteric. This year in particular, the symbol (that which holds potential or energy) and the sign (a factual point within a system) feel unusually aligned, as if they are quietly conspiring in the background.

Ouroborism may not yet appear in the dictionary. But then again, nor did doomscrolling, edgelord, or hangry until recently. Language, like everything else, moves in spirals; some words are voted in by a committee, while others arrive already unrolled from their coil, as if they have always been here.

This one just arrived, born from a circular concept-twisting reverie. Not from ignorance, but from intuition. Not out of error, but from the natural evolution of a mind that prefers resonance to rules.

And really, what better word could belong to the Year of the Snake?

* ai image generated from my own visual references and composition.