G is for Grace

And for Grizzly Bear

Are you are old enough to remember the movie Reality Bites? I was in my early 20's when it came out and I was so excited to see it. I had a girl crush on Winona Ryder and had actually met Ethan (Oh Capitan, My Capitan!) Hawke in Washington Square Park.

I felt grubby when I got out of the theatre, realizing that for the first time in my life I had been directly marketed to - me, with my Bauhaus and Love & Rockets be-stickered car and pre-Chanel black nail polish. Mainstream, meet Alternative, now get cozy and have lots of babies. Yuck.

But there is one part of that movie that stays with me. Winona Ryder's character goes to a job interview, which doesn't go well when Anne Meara asks her to define irony. Winona hems and haws a bit then says, "I know it when I see it!"

I feel that way about the word 'grace' I can look it up a million times, and feel like I have. But it's a slippery, teflon kind of word that, for me, doesn't 'do' definition well. It's got multiple meanings that lay like nesting dolls, one within the other. Grace is experiential, sure, but it's also fluid. It means so many things, and if you stretch the word to represent something it 'almost' means, it brings a certain flavor that's above and beyond it's definition. It's a word that resonates, literally spilling out concentric meanings, seemingly into infinity.

Is that completely daft? (that's a rhetorical question)
Do you have a word that does that for you, transcends definition?