2005 Spelling Bee--laterigrade and poliosis

Let's begin with remaining words from Round 3--laterigrade, poliosis and vellication. Each will take us into nice trips through the dictionary, so let's begin.

1. Laterigrade isn't used much anymore (a frequent hazard in words selected by the committee), and means "belonging to the group Laterigradae of spiders, which run sideways." The quotation provided has the following, from 1887: "The Thomisidae, or laterigrade spiders." The Century also lists the Laterigradae as a family of spiders which run sidewise or backward and "make no web, but stitch leaves together to form a nest or retreat." The only problem I have found, however, is that this group seems to have disappeared from spider taxonomy today, having been swallowed up, so to speak by the Thomisidae. For example, the long and informative Wikipedia article on spiders doesn't list the word. Well, maybe we are just left with laterigrade, meaning "running sidewise."

Now that we are on spiders and sidewise, however, I can't resist going down both of those paths. The study of spiders is either arachnology or araneology. Why? The former is the Greek word and the latter the Latin, though the Greek has 1000X more Google appearances than the Latin--proof that the National Bee will use araneology and cognates in a coming Bee. Here is a web site that boasts 2500 pages on spiders. As we are talking about spiders and sidewise walking, however, we ought to know the word which describes walking backwards. It is cancrizans (from Medieval Latin cancrizare, to walk backward like a crab--cancer). Fascinating to me it is that the dominant use of the word cancrizans today is in music--relating to the canon form, where the subject is repeated in the answer backward instead of forward. Thus one can have a cancrizans movement in the canon. Oh, did you know that there is also an English word cancrisocial? It means to socialize with crabs or to be "associated with crabs in a vital economy." Sounds like many people's marriages, don't you think?

Later/Lateralis

But before I leave this fruitful source of words, I want to return to some words formed with lateralis or later (side). Care should be taken to distinguish words with this root and those with another later root, which means "brick." For example, with the latter (not to be confused with later), we have the mineral laterite, which is a "red, porous, ferruginous clayey substance.." Soil scientists revel in the word, if not the substance, and can talk about lateritization or laterization as the formation of laterite. I didn't know the following: "Lateritization (silica leaching) may be considered as the reverse of podsolization (iron and aluminum leaching)." Did you? Well, I just had to follow up on podzolization, because it sounds so interesting. Well, the root word is podzol, not unexpectedly, and owes its origin in English to this 1906 quotation: "Woodlands of northern countries bearing beech and oak are especially apt to be benefited by the action of lime on the 'raw,' acid humous soil and underlying hardpan, which is commonly under-laid by a leaden-blue sandy subsoil ('Bleisand' of the Germans, 'Podzol' of the Russians)..." But the Russians beat the Germans into English, as there is no "bleisand" in any English dictionary--which probably means that they will try to use the word at the Bee.

One more "brick-like" word and then I must return to the other meaning of later. We have lateritious, which the Unabridged also spells as latericeous, which means it can't be used in a future Bee (double spelling). The Unabridged only defines it as "resembling brick: of the color of red brick," but the OED, which only spells it as lateritious, defines it as in the same way but then adds: "said chiefly of urinary deposits." Hm. That takes away some of the fun of the word, doesn't it? From a 1733 book by George Cheyne that I will probably never read, entitled The English malady; or a treatise of nervous diseases of all kinds, we have "the Water..never with a gross or full lateritious Sediment." I would like to remove its significance from the urinary reference, and just associate it with brick-color. My goodness, any university you can think of is covered with lateritious walls. Well, come to think of the behavior of late-adolescent males, maybe that also means urine-covered walls....

Back now to some work on lateralis, meaning "side" or "sidewise." Latericumbent means "lying on one's side," laterifolious is the growing by the side of a leaf at its base, and laterinflection is a bending or curvature to either side, such as a laterinflection of the spine. Well, there are several more of these I could offer, but let's stop here and turn to one more word ere we quit.

2. Poliosis has a simple and straightforward meaning--"loss of color from the hair." That is what the Unabridged says, but when you know that the Greek word polios means "gray," this "loss of color" is the process of becoming gray. Why look at taking on gray as the loss of something? That is so politically incorrect these days, don't you think? The OED informs us that while polios means "gray," the Greek word pelios means dark bluish grey, and so the word means "partial or general greyness or whiteness of the hair, esp. if premature." It can also mean the presence of a small area of white hair in the scalp. But there is a Latin equivalent for this word, too--canities. As one textbook said, "Canities is a physiological manifestation of the ageing process." I like canitude better--hoariness, whiteness, gravity. Maybe it could be resurrected as a general term to describe the combined solemnity, gravity and "greyness" of an elder statesman. The word polio, as we all know, has a much graver connotation, and in its original form, poliomyelitis is really a "greyness" in the "marrow" of the person leading to flaccid paralysis of limbs and sometimes even respiratory paralysis.

Conclusion

Since we only got to two words today, though there are many more buried in each, I will close with a near neighbor to poliosis. Derived from completely different roots, poliorcetics is the art of conducting and resisting sieges; siegecraft. Derived from polis(city) and herkos (fence or enclosure), poliorcetics was first attested in the 18th century in English and managed to die out by the early 20th. An 18th century quotation gives us a related word: "The enemy had certainly secured the passes; the poliorcetic (po lee or SET ic) art, in those simple days, consisted of little else." This word is in the Unabridged, and I am anxiously looking for it to appear in a future Bee. And one more, for a bonus. If you take the second syllable (herkos) and connect it to the process of building the walls that will be besieged, you have hercotectonic. The Unabridged doesn't have this word, but it has hercogamy, where there is a "wall" inhibiting "marriage," or,more precisely, a "state in which self-pollination is made impossible by structural obstacles (used usually to describe flowers). But, enough is enough. Thanks for joining me.

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