Here’s a word: reside, from the Latin sidere, “to sink or settle.” Can you change where you reside because someone died? It’s such a modern idea to even contemplate it. Until the eighteenth century, the idea of having comfort in the home was so unfamiliar, no word existed for the condition. Comfortable meant merely “capable of being consoled.” Prior to World War I, the drawing room was often referred to as the “death room” because it was where the bodies of loved ones were laid out. After the world wars, the shelter magazine known as Ladies’ Home Journal suggested it was high time for a
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