The Final Re-bar Bee--April 7, 2008

I wasn't in attendance for the 4/7 spelling bee at the Re-bar in Seattle, the final one hosted by Ben and Josh. Randy Hilfman, against whom I have spelled for a few years, was kind enough to send me about 37 special words selected for that event. My purpose here and in the next few essays is to list the words and then go into detail on a number of them. Josh and Ben are quite skillful in choosing words; this list was no exception.

Here are the words that Randy sent me yesterday: leucocholy, pilikia, plectridia, floraison, ectocanthion, clavilux, hypsistarian, arimasp, melanocomous, tonitrous, exequies, liturate, hecceity/haecceity, harquebusier, scazon, babism, arrisways, phenakistoscope, yashmak, rhizanthous, winteraceae, vorago, scolecodont, chevrotain, bavardage, gremio, resnatron, dumka, sfogato, lippizaner, serpulite, lynnhaven, zimarra, typhlology, ithyphallic, soroche, soricident.

This really is a banner week for spelling bees. Along with this bee and the Portland quarterly finals is the Oregon senior spelling bee, held tomorrow at Aurora. I am not as excited about that bee since we use the Merriam-Webster 11th Collegiate for it, a kind of "mini-dictionary." Use of the 11th requires beemasters to select obscure Scottish words or pharmaceutical terms that no one knows or ever uses in order to sort out the "best" from the "second-best" spellers. At least most of the words from the Portland and Seattle bees have very interesting historical or present-day significance.

An Example

Let's take the first word on the list: leucocholy. The Unabridged, which is about as far as anyone usually goes, describes it as a state of mind which accompanies a preoccupation with insipid or trivial things. The definition is interesting, though it really sheds no light on the essence of the word or concept. Is it of use in contemporary psychology? Was it invented in the 1890s, when psychology was bringing to birth an entire vocabulary to describe the inner world of motivation or complexes? The dictionary defines it, but gives no moorage to the word, no way we can even learn how to use it. Well, take that back. It uses it in a sentence from Thomas Gray (whom it doesn't otherwise identify), but the sentence doesn't seem to support the definition. The sentence emphasizes a sort of "joy or pleasure" in a "good easy sort of a state." How is that a preoccupation with trivial things? Thus, by looking only at the Unabridged we are minimally brought into the world of the leucocholy, but we are confused as to its basic significance.

So, we go deeper. The OED has the word, and uses the same quotation from Gray as the Unabridged. But we have a few different words. Gray said in one of his 1742 leters, "Mine...is a white Melancholy, or rather Leucocholy...which, though it seldom laughs or dances, nor ever amounts to what one calls Joy or Pleasure, yet is a good easy sort of a state."

We need to go further. So, I found a 1991 article in Eighteenth Century Studies (vol. 24, pp. 273-291) entitled "Pendet Homo Incertus": Gray's Response to Locke," in which S. H. Clark argues that the basic contribution of Thomas Gray to English letters in the 18th century was to subject the Lockean empirical method to an exacting test through self-examination in a way that resulted in his indecision, dullness and general ennui. He describes this feeling as leucocholy--not a depressed state like melancholy, but a state of sameness and repetitive cycles that reveal nothing new under the sun. He says, in describing his leucocholy:

"When you have seen one of my days, you have seen a whole year of my life; they go round and round like the blind horse in the mill, only he has the satisfaction of fancying he makes a progress, and gets some ground; my eyes are open enough to see the same dull prospect, and to know that having made four-and-twenty steps more, I shall be just where I was....I am a sort of spider, and have little else to do but spin it over again, or creep to some other place and spin there..," quoted on pp. 275-76.

Though the Preacher (Ecclesiastes) speaks of the endless repetitive cycle of life as teaching despair, Gray seems to think it brings a "good easy sort of a state." Far from being obsessed with trivial or insipid things, this state can focus on anything; it simply doesn't get too excited about anything. It is not Stoic; it is leucocholic. Now I think I understand the word and even can associate it with some people I know.

Moving to Other Words

This journey into leucocholy suggests to us that the other words might open worlds at least as interesting. Let's finish this essay with the next word: pilikia. Neither the OED nor the Century has pilikia. If you search those dictionaries you just get lost in the tons of "pili"-type words that are formed off the Latin word pilus, meaning hair. For example, something piliform is "slender or fine as a hair; filiform; filamentous," which something piligerous or pilferous is covered with hair or fur. Other words for this are pilose, pilous. It makes you want to get lost in these words. But there is not a whisper of pilikia. The Unabridged just defines it as the Hawaiian word for "trouble," but the Dictionary of American Regional English, p. 150, takes us just where we want to be. Its first appearance was in 1873, where Bishop (is this the progenitor of the Bishop Trust??) in writing about life in the Hawaiian and Sandwich Islands writes:

"There is one native word in such universal use that I already find I cannot get along without it, pilikia. It means anything, from a down-right trouble to a slight difficulty or entanglement. 'I'm in a pilikia,' or 'very pilikia,'...A revolution would be 'a pilikia.'"

Thus we see it as a term that is a blanket word, which can be applied to any trouble from the least to the greatest. From 1938 we have this: "The phrase 'no pilikia' means approximately 'Don't mind; it's no bother.'"

Conclusion

When you have these first two words of such incredible suggestiveness, you just need to pause and be thankful. Indeed, by taking our time with them we are brought into some philosophical and literary issues of 18th century England as well as the life of 19th -20th century Hawaii. Most of us have never even heard the terms, but by listening to them in their fulness, letting them give up their meaning to us, our lives are enriched.

Let's now turn to some of the other 35 words.

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