Mx Mary Moon

palimpsest [pal-imp-sest]

noun:
1 writing material (such as a parchment or tablet) used one or more times after earlier writing has been erased
2 something having usually diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the surface

Examples:

The narrow corridor in the Porta Venezia neighborhood - running from the busy crossroads of Piazza Otto Novembre to Via Nino Bixio and teeming with modern restaurants - is a palimpsest of modern Milan. (Laura May Todd, A Design Showcase Takes It to the Streets of Workaday Milan, The New York Times, April 2025)

Built in the 1920s and later owned by decorator Craig Wright, the property was a palimpsest of bygone eras, its Spanish Colonial Revival shell containing the mark of many hands. (Sam Cochran, In West Hollywood, a Historic 1920s Home Begins Its New Chapter, Architectural Digest, March 2025)

The original words on this reused text, or palimpsest, have been lost for over a thousand years. But now with the help of modern multispectral imaging technology, a team of scientists and scholars is able to peer through the manuscript’s visible ink and read the long-vanished text below. (Eric A Powell, Recovering Hidden Texts, Archaeology Magazine,March/April 2016)

Seen in this light, my kitchen is a technological palimpsest. Even the older items were once innovations - like my Brown Betty teapot, whose design goes back to the seventeenth century but which is still produced in England, not having been significantly improved on since. (Steven Shapin, What Else Is New?, The New Yorker,May 2007)

Holmes and I sat together in silence all the evening, he engaged with a powerful lens deciphering the remains of the original inscription upon a palimpsest, I deep in a recent treatise upon surgery. (Arthur Conan Doyle, 'The Adventure Of The Golden Pince-Nez ')

Origin:

'parchment from which earlier writing has been removed to clear it for new writing,' 1660s, from Latin palimpsestus, from Greek palimpsestos 'scraped again,' from palin 'again, back' (from PIE kwle-i-, suffixed form of root kwel- 'revolve, move round' PIE kw- becomes Greek p- before some vowels) + verbal adjective of psēn 'to rub smooth,' which is of uncertain origin. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Long ago, writing surfaces were so rare that they were often used more than once. Palimpsest originally described an early form of recycling in which an old document was erased to make room for a new one when parchment ran short. (The word is from the Greek palimpsēstos, meaning 'scraped again.') Fortunately for modern scholars, the erasing process wasn't completely effective, so the original could often be distinguished under the newer writing. De republica, by Roman statesman and orator Cicero, is one of many documents thus recovered from a palimpsest. Nowadays, the word palimpsest can refer not only to such a document but to anything that has multiple layers. (Merriam Webster)