footnotelore

/ˈfʊt.noʊt.lɔːr/

noun · uncountable · etym: anglo-noemic compound · footnote + -lore (a body of knowledge held informally)

the body of knowledge available only in annotations.

every footnoted text1 contains a second, parallel text written by readers, scholars, and the occasional irritated commentator. this second text is the footnotelore. it is rarely indexed, never anthologised, and often more useful than the main matter. consult the footnotes wing for examples; consult marginalia for the manuscript form.

¹and indeed every door, every windowsill, every stranger's brief explanation of how to get to the station — all carry their own footnotelore, supplied by previous visitors.

one acquires footnotelore by reading slowly, downward, and by trusting the smaller type. the lore so acquired is unstable; it tends to contradict itself and to be more interesting than the cited passage2. compare glossarial knowledge and the marginate practice.

²see also the entry for cataphraxis, where the footnotelore was alphabetised twice and never quite recovered.

in a sentence: "the footnotelore of this volume was more honest than its argument."