victims of underground systems

As I write, I find myself looking up words in the dictionary that I already know.

Just to see what it says, just to check that the rest of the world and myself are speaking the same language. Maybe it's to double check my public school upbringing. Maybe it's to to reassure myself that I'm still using the same english as everyone else, and haven't drifted off into incoherant babel. perhaps I have an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

when I was a child, I tried to read the dictionary. I think I lost my patience around the fourth definition for "bay" [A deep, prolonged bark, such as the sound made by hounds.]