Editor’s Notes

Early in this project, when I encountered in Mom’s writing a word that I considered obscure, I added an editor’s note about it. If I didn’t know the word, I figured other readers might not know it either.

Later, I came across a word that appeared to be a typo; by changing the initial letter, I transformed it into the word that I felt sure Mom had intended. When I reread the finished chapter, however, I discovered that my substitute word didn’t make sense in context. So I looked up Mom’s original “typo” and, sure enough, it was a real word that was exactly right where she had used it.

Thereafter, whenever I found an unfamiliar word, my immediate reaction was to look it up; each time, I made a new addition to my vocabulary. I came to view these discoveries as presents…here I am, in my late 60’s, still learning what Mom has to teach me! And so, I left it as an exercise for the readers to the look up any words whose meanings they may wonder about.

While proofreading drafts of the book form of the material in this website, I made a list of the words I’ve learned as I worked on the project. I don’t recall ever having seen many of these words before, though I was familiar a different usage of one of them, I correctly guessed the meanings of several, and I recognized a few others without being entirely certain of their meanings.

Here is my list of new words, in the order in which I they occur in this website:

I now use the term port cochere whenever the opportunity presents itself, always happily remembering Mom as I do so. Although I consider most of the other words too obscure to use, I am always pleased (maybe even smug) when I read and recognize one of them or when I know that one would be appropriate. For example, I can’t imagine ever using the word reredos, but when I look at one of Tom’s photos of any of the colonial cathedrals we visited on our trips to South America, I do think to myself, “what a stunning reredos.”