The Word Notebook

Nora Delmas had glued it back twice, using the laboratory’s reversible adhesive and the prescribed patience, but the box’s gray cardboard rejected this tiny graft. At 5:12 p.m., when she should have been finishing the inventory of shelf C and leaving before traffic built up, she pressed her fingernail flat against the strip of paper and waited ten seconds.

The notebook containing the earliest appearance of the word APODYOPSIS has been stolen.