what's in a word?

[TERRY CAESAR]

     As I try to shove the rest of my life away and keep only the pages of
M&D in front of me, the biggest questions about the book keep sinking into
the smallest ones. For example, words. Take one at the bottom of p. 308:
"caffeous." IS there such a word? WAS there? My OED gives "caffiaceous,"
once, long ago. Or is this a significant question, part of Pynchon's evident
pleasure in composing an eighteen-century style being to confound the differ-
ence between antique usages and wholly original ones?

                 Onward to p. 309 & Beyond,
                      Terry