Portland Spelling Bee--Feb. 18, 2008

I attended the Portland Spelling Bee at the Mississippi Pizza Parlor in North Portland last night. This weekly affair, under the capable emceeship of "Katherine with a K" is holding strong more than a year after its inception. Each week about 15 or more spellers compete for a $20 gift certificate as well as a t-shirt and temporary bragging rights about being one of the best spellers in the Rose City. I was fortunate that I knew the words last night; that isn't always the case. But I am committed, as any of you who read my page know, to learn "all the words," and this page is dedicated to that patient but valuable task. There were three difficult words from last night I would like to note, and then I will complete this essay with three other words I discovered while "wandering" through the dictionary.

Kanji, Decuman, Kathakali

This difficult word kanji (pronounced CON gee) was given in the first round. It is defined as the "corpus of borrowed and adapted Chinese ideographs which forms the principal part of the Japanese writing system." Japanese syllabic writing is known as the Kana system, the chief varieties of which are the Hiragana and Katakana. Here is a web site that will tell you all about kanji. And, if you want to know 50 popular Japanese Kanji, all you have to do is to use this web site, which shows you the symbols and gives the pronunciation. Thus, we could take a very long digression on this word, long enough to learn two languages (Chinese and Japanese), but I won't take that detour today.

The only problem in spelling decuman is whether the last syllable is "men" or "man." But learning the meanng of the word is even more fun. It derives from the Latin decumani, the tenth cohort, but was soon associated with something considerable, large or immense. The dictionaries aren't seemingly clear as to why the tenth part should be large. Is it because 1/10th of anything is a large proportion or because of the story that grew up, preserved in Sir Thomas Browne's Pseud. Ep VII.xvii.2, that the 10th or the decuman wave (fluctus decumanus) is more dangerous and larger than any other? In any case, decuman means "very large, immense; usually of waves." But it also was used, beginning in the 1850s, to describe a gate of the Roman camp near which the tenth cohorts of the legions were encamped. Thus, the decuman gate was the principal entrance to the camp, and it was located furthest from the enemy. So, now you now only know how to spell decuman, but you have some insight as to why it is associated with something large or with the Roman military.

The word Kathakali appeared in a "bonus" round--i.e., a round of exceedingly difficult words for which one could not be eliminated but, if one got the word correct, one would get a $5 gift certificate. My word was meiobars, which I happened to know [it means "regions of low barometric pressure; from the Greek meio, meaning "lesser" or "minor"]. But someone else got Kathakali. It is defined as "a South Indian dance-drama based on Hindu literature, and characterized by its stylized costume and make-up, and frequent use of mime." From Pannikar in 1900: "Our drama...assumes various forms of which Krishnattom and Ramanattom are the principa lones. The latter is usually called Kadhakali (how did it get to Kathakali?) and constitutes our drama proper....Our drama is altogether a dumb-show in which the actors never utter a word but do everything by signs and gestures." Here is a helpful article on the history of kathakali. So, while you are learning your kanji, you can take a detour to the 101 classic kathakali plays.

Some Wandering

Since I was in the "Ka's" in the OED while looking up two of these words, I decided to continue wandering down the "ka" word list to see what old friends I could find and which new words were there. The word kathenotheism, coined by the philologist Max Muller in the 1860s, was built off words characterizing a raging debate in Biblical studies at the time. That debate was captured in the question: were the ancient Hebrews monotheists or henotheists? Indeed, Muller himself helped frame this debate because he invented the term henotheist in his 1860 essay on "Semitic Monotheism," "The latter form of faith, the belief in One God, is properly called monotheism, whereas the term of henotheism (from the Greek word for "one") would best express the faith in a single god." Thus, henotheism was a term invented to describe the belief in one's tribal deity without positing whether that deity was the only god in the world. As in the sciences, so the Darwinian notion of evolution also entered the world of the history of religions. Maybe Hebrew religion went from polytheism to henotheism to monotheism, some thought. That, at least, was one of the debates. Well, that might be helpful bakground, but it doesn't tell us what kathenotheism means. It is a term derived from Vedic religion, and is meant to describe a form of polytheism in which each god for the time is considered single and supreme. It is derived from "kath hena" or "one by one." I have no idea if this is a good word to describe Indian religions; I am almost sure it isn't. But it reflected a time, a philosophy and a way of studying religion that added an important dimension to the history of scholarship.

Before this essay gets completely out of control, let's just focus on a few other "ka's." Kat'exochen is two Greek words to describe something "par excellence." William James could write in 1879: "Schopenhauer..says that Intuition..is 'knowledge kat'exochen." The proper pronunciation is "cat EKS e ken." Kate Greenaway appears directly above kat'exochen in the OED. Well, she (1846-1901) was a children's book illustrator in Victorian England, whose drawings of children were so striking that it led to the development of a line of children's clothing modelled on her drawings. She illustrated many famous works, among them Robert Browning's "Pied Piper of Hamelin." Just as I want to go into a fabric store now and ask about all kinds of fabric words (nainsook, ninon, cretonne, etc.), I think I will wander into a children's clothes store and ask for their "Kate Greenaway" line. See how long I last....

More words in the next essay.

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