Notes to the Question Box moderator that her "children and I are freezing to death this winter because my husband claims that in his Syllabus of Errors, Pius IX condemned the furnace as a modern invention [St. Fidgeta & Other Parodies, 42].
Bowen says that septa might be related to septic, "which goes back to a Greek word meaning 'rotten.' Then again, it might not."
