National Spelling Bee--2005, Essay 20

I only identified about 12 or so words from this round that seem to require comment for me. They are exanthematic, insessorial, merotomize, ligniperdous, anatocism, bursiculate, arenicolous, escamotage, viduity, palander, objicient, longeron, and pelmet. Many of these, as you see, are derived from Greek or Latin roots; thus our patient review of roots will get us a long way.

Let's march through some of them quickly. When you are talking about airplanes you have ailerons, relating to wings, and longerons, which are frame members running lengthways along a fuselage. Viduity is the state or condition of widowhood. The word goes back several centuries in English. From a 1620 Commentary on I Corinthinans: "Yet doth not the apostle simply prefer virginity or viduity before marriage as better." A palander, which the OED calls "rare," is a flat-bottomed ship used on the Mediterranean, originally by the Turks, for carrying horses. Sometimes it is spelled palendar, but the vast majority of appearances are palander. The palander doesn't appear on Rob Ossian's exhaustive list of sailing vessels of this period, though bilander, a two-masted Dutch merchant ship, appears. Something bursiculate is shaped like a "bursa" or a little purse or pouch. The term arose in botany. Synonymns are bursiform, saccate, saccular and vesicular. There are a whole host of words derived from vesical, which means a cyst or bladder or blister. An example would be vesicant, which is both a noun and an adjective. As an adjective it means "producing a blister." Then the Century lists some other terms which I hadn't heard: "producing a bleb; epipastic." The term bleb for "blister" originated in the early 17th century (blister is much older). So we have blebs and blisters and bladders. Something epipastic is, literally, something "sprinkled upon" or a "blister or vesicatory," though normally the term vesicatory is used to describe an ointment which raises or produces blisters. See what interesting paths we can walk down with just one hint?

Continuing on the List

An objicient (ob JIS i ent) is, simply, one who objects to something. The term has its origin not in the realm of law, where one might suppose, but in theology. In Aquinas' Summa Contra Gentiles he says, "If any objicient (L. obiiciens, present participle) says that, the Son being perfect God, there is in Him perfect intellectual power, whereby He can produce a Word..." (this would be a heretical position). The objicient is one who objects to the exponent of the truth, who is called the defendent. Escamotage is a French word meaning a juggling or sleight of hand or trickery. A series of French "conjuring" terms from the 18th century might include escamotage (sleight of hand), tours subtils (legerdemain), gibeciere (conjuring ploys) and gobelets (jugglers' tricks), culminating in the unmasking of the chicanery of banquistes. Of all these italicized words, only escamotage made it into English, and that only in the Unabridged. You wonder sometimes why this would be the case, while gibeciere, for example, just remains out in the cold. Then we have arenicolous which is a lot of fun when you know the root. Colere is Latin for "living in or inhabiting" and arena means "sand." Originally the "arena" was the sandy, enclosed space in the central part of the Roman amphitheaters, in which fights among gladiators or wild beasts took place. Something arenicolous, therefore, lives in sandy soil.

A small detour on infundibular, an easy-to-spell but interesting word is appropriate. An infundibulum in Latin is something into which ("in") something is poured ("fundere" means "to pour"). Thus, an infundibulum is a funnel-shaped organ or part of the body. The more we know our Latin and Greek roots, the more visual our language becomes and the easier it is to understand the usages of words. Well, let's move to ligniperdous, which simply means "wood-destroying." Only the Unabridged and the OED has this word; the Century has ligniform, which means "resembling wood," and ligniferous, which is "producing or yielding wood." The OED's other "ligni" words give us a fine sense of the various ways to "build" a Latinate word. For example, lignicoline means "growing on wood" (colere means "to inhabit"); ligniform is "the form or appearance of wood;" and lignivorous is "wood-devouring."

To merotomize simply means to divide something, while anatocism is just a big word for "compound interest." Taking apart the latter we have the Greek word "ana," which means "from above" or "again," and tocism, which is from tokizein, which means to lend on interest. Thus, something which adds to or adds something again of interest is compound interest. Insessiorial is a term from ornithology and pertains to "the Insessores or Perchers." This group is to be distinguished from those which are "raptorial" in character. Something exanthematic is "eruptive" or of the nature of an exanthema. I guess that the word choosers were on a "blister binge" and so they selected exanthematic. The OED has exanthema as "an efflorescence, eruption or rash, such as takes place in measles, etc." Can't you just hear the mother talking to her child: "What is that efflorescence on your cheek, my dear?" But if you take apart the word, that is what you get. It is "ex," which means "out of or from," and "antheein" is the Greek word from "blossom." An anthus is a blossom. The OED even tells us that there is a word exanthematology to describe the "doctrine or study of the exanthemata." An exanthematologist, then, would study measles, small pox, etc.

Conclusion

Finally, let's conclude with pelmet, a term rhyming with helmet but having nothing to do with it (thanks, Bill). It is a narrow border or cloth or wood fitted across the top of a door or window to conceal the curtain fittings. Tons of pictures are online, and you can see a wide variety of interesting shaped pelmets.

We are picking up steam now on the bee, and have only about 70 or so words to go.

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