Yeah . . . stubbing out another cigarette, in a voice like warm asphalt — this was an arrangement I had in hard times. I had root canal work to be done, and this man, who was an endodontologist, which is a root canal man, was writing pieces for dental journals. But he was not awfully good with the language, so we made an agreement, a barter arrangement, of one paper, one root. So I’d come in with one tooth with two bad roots and he would do them and then I’d rewrite, really write, because these were very, and there was a battle in the endodontological world about whether debridement was desirable or even possible. Debridement is when they try to remove any source of infection so that when they do pack the root, it won’t come to life. And his side was debridement was possible and necessary and can be done. So that’s the side I was supporting.
— Nice word, isn’t it.
— Oh yeah. Debridement is one of the great words . . . says novelist William Gaddis, one of the great survivors.
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Biblioklept 