My CDs aren't CDs anymore. Well, there are still CDs, but the plastic is obsolete, out on display in mostly alphabetical order, while what I'm listening to, almost exclusively is a copy made with magnetic fields and fancy stuff like that. My CDs are now directories or subdirectories. I should probably go back to calling them albums or something like that, but they've become CDs by now.

Of course, that takes me back to the question of coatracks and whether my dresser is a coatrack, and if, by extension, a plethora of everyday objects are likewise coatracks. But that kind of thinking defeats the purpose of a word, negates the images and connotations, permutations and combinations, of a word that's been around the block a few times...

Curses! Coatrack isn't in my Dictionary of Etymology! Nor is it in either of two small paperback dictionaries or a small paperback Japanese-English dictionary... Nor is it in the German-English dictionary, a book the size of the Dictionary of Etymology -- weapon-sized books.

Meanwhile, tonight I have my sweater hanging on the coat hook on the back of the door to this room (that one was in the German-English dictionary, Kleiderhaken). Compound word considerations might be involved here, but German is great with compound words. I'd surely be justified in sticking the relevant words together in German to make my coatrack. But I already put the dictionary away.

And the hook will do for now. Hooks always do. But I'll probably forget my sweater.

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