hegira (en)

(noun) a journey especially when undertaken to escape from a dangerous or undesirable situation; exodus; from the migration or journey of Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Medina in 622

hellion (en)

(noun) a troublesome or mischievous person

helots (en)

a subjugated population group that formed the main population of Laconia and Messenia, the territory controlled by Sparta (in Ancient Greece)

Henri Bergson (en)

a French philosopher (1859-1941), influential especially in the first half of the 20th century and after WWII in continental philosophy; known for his influential arguments that processes of immediate experience and intuition are more significant than abstract rationalism and science for understanding reality

Heracles (en)

same thing as Hercules; divine hero in Greek mythology who had to perform 12 labours

Herbert Marcuse (en)

a German-American philosopher, sociologist, and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory

Herrenvolk (de)

"master folk", i.e., the German nation as considered by the Nazis to be innately superior to others; also used in 19th century discourse that justified colonialism with the racial superiority of Europeans; results in a system of government in which only the majority ethnic group participates in government, while minority groups are disenfranchised

heteroclite (en)

(noun) a word irregular in inflection / (noun) a noun irregular in declension / (noun) one that deviates from common forms or rules / (adjective) deviating from common rules or forms

heterodiegetic (en)

in film studies and narratology, descriptive of a narrator that does not take part in the plot

heterodox (en)

unorthodox

heteronomy (en)

(noun) subjection to something else / (noun) a lack of moral freedom or self-determination

Historic Compromise (en)

a historical Italian political alliance between the Christian Democrats and the Italian Communist Party in the 1970s

Hobbesian (en)

referring to the 17th century English author Thomas Hobbes, whose best-known work, Leviathan, describes a situation of unrestrained, selfish and uncivilized competition

Holocene (en)

the current geological epoch which started some 11,500 years ago when the glaciers began to retreat

homonymy (en)

the relation between words with identical forms but different meanings

homothety (en)

(mathematics) An isotropic scaling transformation of an affine space with a single fixed point

hoplite (en)

(noun) a heavily armed infantry soldier of ancient Greece

Horatio Alger (en)

a prolific 19th-century American writer, best known for his many young adult novels about impoverished boys and their rise from humble backgrounds to lives of middle-class security and comfort through hard work, determination, courage, and honesty

horizontic (en)

not sure - like horizontal?

Huxtable (en)

The upper middle-class African-American family living in Brooklyn that is the subject of The Cosby Show

hypnagogic (en)

(adjective) of, relating to, or occurring in the period of drowsiness immediately preceding sleep

hypocaust (en)

(noun) an ancient Roman central heating system with underground furnace and tile flues to distribute the heat

hypostasis (en)

(noun) something that settles at the bottom of a fluid / (noun) the settling of blood in the dependent parts of an organ or body / (noun) person / (noun) the substance or essential nature of an individual / (noun) something that is hypostatized / (noun) failure of a gene to produce its usual effect when coupled with another gene that is epistatic toward it

hysterical realism (en)

a term coined in 2000 by English critic James Wood to describe what he sees as a literary genre typified by a strong contrast between elaborately absurd prose, plotting, or characterization, on the one hand, and careful, detailed investigations of real, specific social phenomena on the other (see DeLillo, Pynchon, DFW, Zadie Smith)

ichor (en)

(noun) a thin watery or blood-tinged discharge / (noun) an ethereal fluid taking the place of blood in the veins of the ancient Greek gods