Suzette was keen to unpack karma. Was the word a pure Buddhist notion, or did the dictionary have other incarnations? Pushed for time I let the question gather dust in the inbox. Life was too short to answer every word query.

Not that I'm a malicious soul. Nor am I lazy. (With any luck, given all the word queries I've kindly answered over the journey, I'm due to return to earth as a sea-eagle, preferably on the south coast somewhere.) But I can't escape the truth; when inquiries flood the server, I answer the easier ones first.

Hypocrite, say, is no relation to Hippocrates, the father of medicine. I'd sent that response back to Les Pick in two minutes flat. How's that for good karma? Hypocrite, I'd explained, links to hypokrites in Greek, an actor, a masked performer. While Hippocrates owes his name to the live export of African herbivores.

Then there was Bronwyn, distracted by vowels. Was facetious the only word to own all five in alphabetical order? No, I replied promptly. You can also add abstemious, as well as arsenious (of arsenic compounds), while the list of non-alphabetic supervocalics (as these words are termed) extends beyond 1400, including dialogue, vexatious, tambourine and supervocalic.

Next in line was Paul Goddard, a bloke bewitched by desire lines. Nothing to do with erotic fiction. Instead of blue, think green: the sprawling lawns of parks and campus where years of passing feet have carved their own thoroughfare. Desire lines are democratic tangents, as I replied to Paul. Short-cuts in the main, the lines prove our species' contempt for official pathways, especially when there's an easier, more scenic, tack to take.