karass

English

Etymology

Coined by American writer Kurt Vonnegut in 1963, in the novel Cat's Cradle.

Noun

karass (plural karasses)

1. A network or group of people who are somehow affiliated or linked spiritually.
   • 1963, Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle:

     We Bokononists believe that humanity is organized into teams, teams that do God's Will without ever discovering what they are doing. Such a team is called a karass by Bokonon […]

   • 2012, Jo Walton, Among Others, →ISBN:

     I do want to go to Arlinghurst, even though it's moronic and awful and there's no privacy at all, because I have started to build my karass there. I have the book club,I have the library—both libraries.

   • 2013, Felix Lebed, Michael Bar-Eli, Complexity and Control in Team Sports: Dialectics in Contesting Human Systems, Routledge, →ISBN, page 128:

     Like all complex systems of this type, each “karass” has its own history (see Chapter 1, 1.2). This history is a selected and saved internal ethos of organization based on both social relations and common activity experience.

   • 2015, Tommy Wallach, We All Looked Up, →ISBN, page 276:

     I think you may be the only good person in the whole karass. Or maybe you and Anita. I'm still not sure about her.” “Karass?” “Oh, it's Andy's thing. Well, Kurt Vonnegut's thing. It's a group of people who are connected, but, like, spiritually.

Anagrams

• Askars, Raskas, Skaars, kasras