A karass, or "imagined community", is a word from the fictional religion of Bokonism, which was invented by Kurt Vonnegut for his novel Cat's Cradle. It is "[a] group of people who, unbeknownst to them, are collectively doing God's will in carrying out a specific, common, task. A karass is driven forward in time and space by tension within the karass". A granfalloon is a false karaass, such as "the Communist Party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General Electric Company, the International Order of Odd Fellows—and any nation, anytime, anywhere". Another definition is "a proud and meaningless association of human beings". All the text attributed to the Books of Bokonon can be found online here. I consider the various historical racial terms to signify different granfalloons.

I made a list of the various words from Bokonism at Wordie.

http://www.wordie.org/people/seanahan?wl=769

I've never read Cat's Cradle, which I now hear is supposed to be one of Vonnegut's best books.

Sean, in your list you say that, "No karass is without a wampeter, Bokonon tells us, just as no wheel is without a hub. Anything can be a wampeter: a tree, a rock, an animal, an idea, a book, a melody, the Holy Grail." Anything can be a "wampeter?"

Anything can be a "wampeter?"

quote:

An object which is the focus of a karass; that is, the lives of many otherwise unrelated people are centered on a wampeter (e.g., a piece of ice-nine in Cat's Cradle). A karass will always have exactly two wampeters: one waxing, one waning. The term first appears on p. 52 of Cat's Cradle (in the 1998 printing by Dell Publishing). It is analogous to a MacGuffin.

[From the Wikipedia article on Bokonism.]

That quote is directly from the book. The karass containing many of the characters from the book has a wampeter of ice-nine.