At the Rebar Bee--Third Essay for March 3, 2008

We are now in the "killer" third round, which cut down the field from about 18 to 7, though six of the seven remaining spellers had each missed two words. Here are the words for the next group of spellers in Round # 3.

Speller # 2-- quadrat, thalassotherapy, locofoco. The speller missed the second and third words. Though the former has several definitions in the OED, the one used was "a small area, typically of one square meter or less, marked out for studying the local distribution of plants and animals." Coming up with the idea of the quadrat was a significant advancement in the study of ecology. Before we move on, we ought to pause on this last sentence for a second. What seems most natural to us today--that you need to isolate a region and then subject it to the most minute scrutiny, wasn't always the way people thought you should study. Indeed, when you take the time to realize that most of Victorian writing was diffuse and general, in every field, you can see how the notion of "tight focus," which quadrat requires, would really not have been suggested by many people in the 19th century. Thus, we understand how the first use of the term in its ecological sense was in 1904, three years after good ole Victoria died. Once you start looking at the word through the quadrat method, you see that a good deal of your work is merely descriptive--writing down what you see in the one square meter of the universe of which you are the "master." But then, as your understanding develops, you learn to draw generalizations, develop identification skills and actually are able to learn more about the world than with typical Victorian generalities. Returning to spelling, as long as you don't confuse this word with quadrant, you should have a pretty easy time of the word.

Thalassotherapy

The speller missed thalassotheraphy. Once you know the Greek roots behind it, however, the word is trivially easy. So, let's learn 'em. Let's begin with a more popular word: thalassocracy. Everyone should know "cracy," for it is derived from the Greek word for "rule" or "power," and is connected with such words as "democracy." But you just have to know that the Greek word thalassa means "the sea." Therefore a thalassocracy, with is the same as thalassocraty, means "sovereignty of the seas." From an old issue of the American Journal of Archaeology, we have "We read of Minos, the legendary Cretan ruler, with his thalassocracy, and we think chiefly of war, not of commerce--yet the power of Minos would have been of little moment unless to protect commerce." Britain in the 18th-19th centuries aspired to a world thalassocracy. Thus, thalassotherapy is simply "treatment of a disease by sea bathing, sea voyages, etc." The Century is helpful in that it lists more than 20 words derived from the Greek root thalassa. A few of them are: (1) thalassophilous, which means "fond of or inhabiting the sea." By the way, the Thalassophila is a suborder or other group of pulmonate gastropods living on sea-shores or in salt-marshes; (2) thalassometer, a tide-gauge; (3) thalassography, the old word for oceanography; (4) Thalassochelys, a genus of chelonians, also known as the loggerhead turtles; (5) thalassiophyte, a plant of the genus Thalassiophyta, or a seaweed or alga; (6) thalassic, living in the high seas; pelagic; marine. We could go on and on, and sometimes repetition is good because it serves to press the concepts clearly on our minds, but I think we have done enough on it now...

Locofoco

Locofoco is hyphenated in the OED but since there are no hyphenated words in spelling bees, this must mean that it appears as one word in the Unabridged. No one seems to know precisely what prompted the formation of the word (but see below), but it is defined as a "self-igniting cigar or match." The first attestation is in 1839: "We were offered lately in the streets of Pittsburgh a kind of loco-foco matches which were new to us...They ignite by friction and burn as if containing phosphorous." Thus, it is simply a match as we know it. But let's dig a little deeper and learn some fascinating things.

The Century is not as hesitant in giving us the origin and earliest meanings of locofoco as the OED. It says that the term emerged in 1834 and was "ignorantly made" on the model of the locomotive, a word just then becoming familiar, and supposed by the inventor of locofoco to mean "self-lighting" just as the locomotive was "self-moving." But then, in 1835, it took on a new meaning. The name was given with reference to an incident occurring at a tumultuous meeting of the Democratic party in Tammany Hall, NY, in 1835. After their opponents had turned off the gas, the radical faction relighted the room with candles by the aid of the new locofoco matches. The radical faction using the matches was called the Locofoco faction of the party. When the radicals disappeared, the word was taken to refer to the Democratic party in general by its opponents. I wouldn't be surprised if in this Presidential election cycle we will have someone use the term locofoco to refer to the Democrats. Now you know why...

The term proved internationally popular, as Charles Dickens, in his 1843-44 serialization of Martin Chuzzlewit could write: "Here's full particulars of the patriotic loco-foco movement yesterday, in which the whigs was so chawed up."

Conclusion

I had vowed to go more quickly, but it looks like I am only to the end of Speller # 2's words. Let's sneak ahead to Speller # 3's first word--nicolaitan. He misspelled it, but there is really no reason for this, since it is a Biblical word, even though the definition given referred to the meaning of "married priest, an opponent of marital celibacy." Peter Damian, an 11th century writer, identified the opponents of marital celibacy as Nicolaitans. But the word actually originates from Revelation 2, where John is writing letters to the seven Churches in Asia Minor. In speaking to the Church at Ephesus, he writes. "Yet you have this to your credit; you hate the work of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate," (Rev. 2:6). We don't know more about these ancient people from Asia Minor than this....

Let's continue on the difficult but enlightening words from Round # 3 in the next essay.

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