Words cycle through our daily vocabulary at different rhythms. Certain words stick with us for life, and remain immediately accessible to us at any moment: the names of loved ones, the building-block grammar of our native tongue, the primary colors and cardinal numbers, and so on. Other words wax and wane, in sync with forces larger than the individual speaking them: the fashionable vagaries of slang, the geek-speak of technological innovation, the “ethnic” idiom derived from broader demographic trends… Most words, however, lie somewherein between: drifting in and out of our regular vocabulary, like a band of itinerants cursed with a hankering to settle down.