the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation (adj: semiotic)
under erasure: a strategic philosophical device originally developed by Martin Heidegger; involves the crossing out of a word within a text, but allowing it to remain legible and in place; used extensively by Jacques Derrida in his philosophy of deconstruction to signify that a word is "inadequate yet necessary"
causing vertigo, especially by being extremely high or steep