I was reading a Jack Higgins suspense novel — curled up with a good book, as they say — enjoying the solitude of a quaint little cottage on the St. Lucie River. Just a stone’s throw (something else they say) from Florida’s Treasure Coast, I came across this little gem, “perfidy.”

While “perfidy” is not an “extremely” uncommon word, it’s a “less frequently” used word. I should have investigated it then but did not. Now, pages later, I couldn’t remember the word. But I did recall the page number, 256, the same number of cubic inches in the engine of my brother’s first car, a 1954-55 Ford Thunderbird.

I found the word, looked it up and was surprised to find that I already had an affiliation with the word, and as far back as the eighth grade. Not “perfidy” but “perfidia,” the Spanish translation.

I recalled “Perfidia” as a song played by The Ventures, an instrumental rock band, formed in 1958 and just one of several bands that helped popularize the electric guitar in the 1960s.

Originally a Spanish-language song,........

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