Words from the 2005 Student Bee

I love to use the occasion of a spelling bee with sophisticated words to dive deeply into various dictionaries to find and define words that probably have not previously swum into our ken. Along the way, we discover that we are enticed to "turn in here" as the Scriptures say (oops--isn't it the "loose woman" that says this?) or, from Greek mythology, that we want to heed the Siren (more singing women) call to find yet other words to describe and understand the world.

The next 28 words I would like to study are taken from the first 134 words of the first oral round (including the 25 from the written round). They are: torsade, upaithric, frangipane, piolet, ballabile, synoecious, esne, empressement, orihon, bosselated, schalstein, dactyloscopy, fougasse, rawinsonde, baragouin, cabecera, lapilli, hafiz, peripneustic, sevillana, aspergilliform, Deruta, leguleian, phenylalanine, hyalithe, monoxenous, bartizan and dakhma. Some of these are beautifully useful words, though many of them will probably only see the light of day in spelling bees. I divide these into three categories: words I can dispense with quickly; scientific words; words to explore more fully.

Dispensing With (More Than) a Dozen

Almost all web pictures of a torsade, defined as a "twisted fringe, cord, or ribbon, used as an adornment in head-dresses, curtains, etc.," are from French-language web sites. So, this is another instance of our borrowing of a very good French word. Usually we use the phrase "trimmed with a torsade of" or "with torasdes of wool (or whatever)." Don't confuse this with torsades de pointes (I know you have that tendency), which is "a form of tachycardia characterized by the gradually oscillating amplitude of the ventricular electrical pulse.." How are the two related to each other? Well, the first rendering of torsade de pointes in English, in 1967, has the following: "The 'spindles' of ventricular fibrillation in the 'torsadoes de pointes' attacks...." So, a "spindle" is either something long, sharp and narrow, around which yarn is spun, or, as the OED says is an "amount of thread or yarn as can be prepared on a spindle at one time.." Thus, spindle can be thread, or yarn or cord or, bingo!, torsade. Though, now that I think of it, I wonder if the "spindle" of such a heart attack is it sharpness...In any case it is a form of ventricular tachycardia, though different from the "classic" case.

I better get moving, because I am only through one word. If only human existence and the world were just simpler, we just could define it all! Well, next is upaithric, which means "open to the air." Its "difficult word" cousin is hypaethral. Great. Then, frangipane refers either to a perfume, an extract of milk for preparing artificial milk, or a kind of pastry. Don't try to divine its meaning from the word; the OED suggests that what lies behind the word is a proper name. Moving along, a piolet is a two-headed ice axe used by mountaineers. Pictures abound online. Ballabile entered into English from French in 1847 and means a dance executed by a large number of people. The word was introduced into France by Carlo Blasis (1797-1878), whose 1820 work on ballet techniques revolutionized the field. I tracked down an article which describes Blasis' ballet techique, but I don't have time to introduce it here. Ok, on we go. Esne is short and sweet. It (EZ ne) means "a laborer or man of lower classses among the Anglo-Saxons." However, the word esnecy is a legal term defined as follows: "a private prerogative allowed to the eldest coparcener, where an estate is descended to daughters for want of an heir male, to choose first after the inheritance is divided." I wonder how it morphed from a "male" to a "female" term. Well, I guess esne originally could refer either to a male or female, so the problem isn't as big as imagined. Some have tried to derive it from the Latin "antenatus," (first born), but I think this is a stretch. Coparceners, if memory serves me correctly, only exist when you have a tenancy in common, but that is law talk. I wonder if you could address the eldest of the daughters, who had this prerogative, as "Your Esnecy." Probably not, but maybe that will help us remember the word!

Moving Faster

Empressement is "an animated display of cordiality." "She greeted the guests with alacrity and empressement." I don't think it carries the notion of insincere greeting or fawning; it simply suggests a slightly over-the-top welcome. When I think of empressement, I think of the television series Cheers and the greeting--NORM!!! Then we have orihon, a folding or accordion-style book. This Japanese art is derived from the same root that gives us origami. Fougasse is the same as fougade, and that means "a little mine in the form of a well, 8 or 10 feet wide and 10 or 12 deep, charged with sacks of powder, covered with stones or earth." Its purpose is, KABOOM!!, when someone wanders over it. The original land mine. Rawinsonde is one of those words beloved from the 1940s and 1950s which is a portmanteau word from technology. It is a ballon-borne device combining radiosonde and winds-aloft observations into one operation. Whoopee. Actually, I think there is also a word dropsonde which is a variation on the radiosonde. Instead of being born aloft by a balloon, these little things are dropped into the hurricane from the reconnaissance aircraft. These help us predict hurricanes, I have been told. Let's quickly conclude this essay with cabacera, the chief city in a province or district of a Spanish-speaking country; lapilli, small stones or pebbles, especially from a volcano; Deruta, a town in Italy, was famous for its pottery and ceramics. Hence the name refers to that; hyalithe is barely attested and refers to an opaque class resembling porcelain (hyalite has thousands more attestations, but I am not sure if it is precisely the same thing). Finally, a bartizan is a "battlemented parapet at the top of a castle or church; esp, an over-hanging battlemented turret projecting from an angle at the top of a tower." Why don't you just do an image search of it and see the semi-round tower?

Well, I got through 14. One more essay has to complete this section.

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