The Living
Lexicon.

A grammatical quality of nouns: being treated as alive (and not as object). In English, grammar is almost entirely neutral; in Anishinaabemowin, more than half the lexicon is animate. Key concept for Kimmerer, Hallowell, Descola.

From Ancient Greek: companion of Aphrodite. Does not name a trigger of desire but an accompanying presence. The translation as "aphrodisiac" impoverishes the word; INFUSE keeps the original sense.

INFUSE word built on a Guarani breath-term. Names the breath-soul-singularity of a being or a moment. Not the Christian "soul". Not the New Age "vibe". The breath that makes this thing this thing.

Yoruba word. The participatory life-force that runs through everything that exists. Imported as-is — refusing to translate it as "energy". One does not have asé; one cultivates the conditions in which it can circulate.

A plant substance that helps the organism adapt to stress without spike or collapse. Concept coined by Lazarev (1947), refined by Brekhman (1969). Not a stimulant; a modulator.

INFUSE phrase. The body thought of as a country one inhabits, not a machine one services. Sources: Van der Kolk, Bachelard, Merleau-Ponty.

The narrow, warm thing — to be distinguished from network (wide, cold). The bond is chosen, held, mended. With plants, with the dead, with neighbours. INFUSE basic unit of a standing life.

A bath whose purpose is not hygiene but inner displacement. Present in every culture — Russian banya, Jewish mikveh, Turkish hammam, Japanese sentō, Mexica relation-baths. A threshold by water.

A plant that does not do but holds. Discreet, durable, non-pharmaceutical mode of action. Opposed to remedy. A companion is what changes the texture of the day, not its plot.

An origin-story of the world. Within INFUSE, the editorial format of large open questions: what is a plant? what is a dream? what is a cycle? Not an answer — a frame.

INFUSE adjective for content stripped of its marketing charge. Not the Weberian sense (the world becoming inert). The opposite: a disenchanted word is a word released from the spell that emptied it. A disenchanted plant is a plant returned to its lineages, with no performance promise, no empty superlative.

The Aboriginal Australian (here from the Pitjantjatjara) word for the time of creation that is always still active under the surface of the visible. Not a past — a continuing. INFUSE never uses it as metaphor; we cite the people first.

Recommended dose and duration for a first encounter with a plant — not a posology, an invitation. Always stated minimally, never as prescription. ("Fenêtre d'exploration" in the FR original; we keep "window" to preserve the threshold-image.)

Capitalised: INFUSE's digested library of 348 books. Lower-case: the editorial site you are reading. The Forest speaks when the librarian composes a faithful, anonymous voice from the convergent passages of the books.

The form a plant is prepared in — infusion, tincture, capsule, elixir, macerate. The galenic choice changes what the plant becomes.

The human as symbiotic ecosystem (microbiota + body). Not "individual". Not "consumer". A person is a parliament of cells and bacteria.

The act-as-declaration. The verb and the brand fuse. Used in the first person. Untranslated as a sign of the gesture's specificity.

Helichrysum odoratissimum, the dream-and-ancestor plant of the Zulu and Xhosa peoples. INFUSE uses the Zulu word, not "smudge" (Lakota lineage, distinct grammar). The two are not synonyms.

The chain of transmission of a plant — peoples, translators, herbalists — that carries its memory. A plant without lineage is a molecule. A plant with lineage is a companion.

The tutelary figure of the INFUSE Forest. Not "Mother Earth" (a phrase emptied by overuse). Points to a specific tree, identified, named. Cf. also Suzanne Simard's hub-trees in mycorrhizal forests.

The underground network of fungi that links forest trees through mycorrhizal symbiosis. INFUSE figure for what binds without being seen.

From the Greek oneiros (dream) + genes (to engender). A plant that favours, intensifies or alters the dream without necessarily inducing sleep. A family distinct from hypnotics and hallucinogens.

The mother-essay of a cluster — 3,000 to 5,000 words, laying down the general grammar that all other essays complete or qualify. Distinct from the plant-profile (encyclopedic) and the spoke (short, angled).

The quality of attention a plant requires in order to give what it has — distinct from the dose. No use drinking more if one does not listen better.

INFUSE phrase, after Kimmerer: a plant addressed grammatically and ethically as a person — "who", not "it". Not metaphor. A grammatical commitment.

Movement opposite to Weber's disenchantment — the awakening of animacy. Not "magic". Not "spirituality". The world coming back to noticeability.

Rosa rubiginosa / mosqueta. The simplest, most underestimated oil for the skin. Andean origin, Chilean Mapuche-and-criollo lineage.

A plant's verifiable, named origin: gatherer-people, place, gesture, season. At INFUSE, a condition of any publication or commercialisation. No anonymous plant.

INFUSE phrase used instead of "smudging" when the lineage is not Lakota. "Smudging" is a specific Indigenous North American practice; using it for any aromatic burn flattens distinct grammars. Imphepho is a smoke offering. Palo santo is a smoke offering. White sage smudging belongs to a named people.

A place of tipping between two states. Sleep, waking, cycle, ritual are thresholds. Plant-companions are at home there; pharmaceuticals are strangers.

A word in INFUSE vocabulary loaded with an architectural function in the editorial. Not jargon: a grammar. 13 term-totems compose the skeleton of the Living Lexicon.

Anonymous synthesis of what the sources say when one lets them speak together. An INFUSE editorial format distinct from the signed author: the forest speaks when the librarian (348 books) composes a mean voice — faithful and discreet.

INFUSE original word: the fusion of I and WE. Names a state in which the individual consciousness is in service to the living tissue. Not "community" (vague). Not "tribe" (appropriative). The we-that-still-says-I.