I just read an essay in the Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide. The author was talking about how his friendship with a now famous artist began in the 50s at a teacher’s college in Kentucky.

He used the word abecedary, and for the first time in yonks, I had to put down the magazine and look it up. The teachers college was a clue, but I couldn’t get the meaning from context.

My first grade teacher in 1969 would have known it. Mrs. Purdue was old, and she retired after that year.

When was the last time you had to stop everything to look up a word?

What was it?

It’s ok if to look up the word all you had to do was highlight it on a screen. That counts.

Abecedary stopped me in my tracks. Have you been stopped dead recently?