the vocabulary of intensity

towards a new type of linguistic thermodynamics

a lot of language is like advice on the internet. we may say the word boundary but we don’t mean boundary. we mean boundary+, boundary but intensified. thickened. layered. just like intentionality isn't just "intending"—it's about the structural load-bearing of the intent. the word integument is a thick boundary. and in that thickness, you can feel the pressure. this is the vocabulary of intensity.

it’s not just that some words are more precise. it’s that they are more dense. they’ve metabolized more experience. integument is to boundary as blaze is to light. same root idea, more metabolic load.

but there’s no map for this. no official theory of intensified words. (deleuze had some ideas we like) and so we keep saying words like container, path, structure, and we don’t notice we’re working with the dimmer switch off. we don't have a brightness scale for language.

what would it look like to build one?

start with container. baseline concept. but make it intimate. make it totalizing. womb. womb is not a container; it is the act of enfolding futures. it is container + time + nourishment + mystery.

wall? that’s nice. it keeps things out. but when the wall starts strategizing back at you, when it projects force, when it organizes a system of refusal, it becomes a bastion.

surface is polite. you shake hands with a surface. but a carapace? that’s when a surface becomes a refusal to be known. it protects, yes, but at the cost of contact. it is a boundary + trauma.

this is not about vocabulary. it's about intensity fields. domains where words accrue pressure and specificity and density and social function.

in the same way science normalizes domains—classifying trees, naming stars, predicting fluids—there’s a missing science of intensification. of linguistic thermodynamics. of how base ideas acquire weight.

some of these intensified words are militarized (fortress), some are emotionalized (cry), some are bio-spiritual (scar), some are infrastructural (artery). but the point isn’t to catalog. the point is to realize we’re already navigating with these tools—but we don’t know we are.

the boundary between mark and scar is like the boundary between note and cry. it’s not just a semantic difference—it’s a difference in life load.

the reason this matters isn’t poetic. it’s architectural.

if you don’t know the difference between structure and armature, you won’t build systems that hold under pressure. if you can’t feel the difference between field and arena, you will misread the stakes of a space. if you keep talking about containers when you mean wombs, you’re going to bring the wrong kind of ethics, the wrong kind of infrastructure, to the wrong kind of domain.

and if you don’t have a vocabulary for interstices, you won’t know how to read silence, margin, gap. the space between. the unorganized.

and what’s unorganized is invisible.

language is how we normalize thought. if we had normalized the full spectrum of boundaries, we’d have different theories of security. if we had normalized the range from voice to cry, we’d have better theories of political discourse. if we had normalized the difference between line and fissure, we’d have better theories of rupture.

maybe the real reason we don’t talk about intensities of words is the same reason we don’t talk about how unorganized we are. we are not organized enough to perceive the difference.

so this is a call—not just for better words. but for organized experience. for the intentional mapping of intensity. because when we organize space-time, we can manipulate it. when we can manipulate it, we can live inside it. with clarity.

and that’s what smartness is: organized manipulation of organized experience.
and that’s what wisdom is: organized memory of meaningful intensities.

we are not wise yet. we barely acknowledge the difference between boundary and integument. but the moment we start speaking from the right layer of pressure, maybe we will.