teachers are a strange lot. once, in a HS honors Eng. class, I wrote a story that had a car 'careering' out of control down a hilly road. it was red-lined, "no such word"; so when I did my edit (something she often asked us to do) I changed the word to 'careening', and was duly rewarded with "no such word". in spite of her, I maintained an interest in words.