When I was in 1st grade, my mom dropped a stupid amount of money on a pair of dictionaries, bought from a door-to-door salesman. I
loved them, and she knew that I would. Easily the best investment that she ever made on my behalf. One was a "Student" edition that was somewhat dumbed down in order to make room for several chapters of material that essentially acted as Cliff's notes for high-school level classes. The other was a "Collegiate" edition that brought the font size down a couple of notches and not only added to the word count, but crammed a bunch more information into each entry.
When I was in the 6th grade my family was going through a rough time. The third school that I attended that year was the same one that I'd attended 5 years previously; when the dictionaries were bought. Some of the other schools to which I'd been in the meantime, had been underwhelming in terms of their academia. So when I found myself in a vocabulary class in this particular school, assigned to look up the word 'pandemonium' and read it out loud for the class, I thought, "This town gave me a good education; I'll use the "Collegiate" dictionary and read the full 7+ entries..."
The teacher was rolling her eyes at me after the 3rd entry, but entry #6 referenced the original source of the word: Milton's
Paradise Lost, in which the city of Pandaemonium is the capital of Hell. Only it started off with "the capital of Hell" part, not the "from Milton's..." part.
Hello, small town, Iowa.
To her credit, I think the teacher knew enough to see it coming, and moved to usher me to my seat before I'd finished saying the word, 'capital'.
