The Final Re-bar Bee, Sixth Essay

I only have three words from the 4/7 Re-bar spelling bee to exposit. Then, because you have been so patient in learning these words, I will reward you with a couple of others I discovered in route to explaining these.

Soroche

Let's begin with soroche, or altitude sickness. You don't get this in Louisiana or Florida, but travelers are especially prone to it in Peru. Many an unsuspecting tourist, fired by the prospect of visiting Machu Pichu and other wonders of the ancient Incas, has risen from his/her Cusco bed only to collapse in a heap and be unable to visit these striking remains. Known also as puna or apunamiento, it can be experienced by any person in good health if s/he doesn't react well to the lower air pressure of elevations above 7,000 feet. Here is a sign atop Mount Evans, one of the 50 or so peaks in the 14,000' "club" in Colorado. It warns against the dangers of altitude sickness, though it doesn't encourage you to learn a new word--soroche--while you are figuring out if this is your condition. Too bad. Even people who suffer want to learn, especially when they no longer are suffering.

Soricident

Like the word solecodont, discussed in an earlier essay, this word also has a "dont/dent" ending, which means that teeth are in view. Thus, soricident means "having or characterized by teeth like those of shrews in which the middle pair of incisors are very large and the canines are small and underspecialzed." As might be expected, the underlying word is from the Latin sorex, which means "shrew." Here are three pictures of a water shrew (Sorex palustris): in one it seems to be meditating, in one hurling itself into the water and in one, napping after exerting itself. Ah, the life cycle of a sorex. The pygmy shrew is among the smallest mammals in North America--it is no bigger than your entire thumb. There aren't too many words in English derived from sorex; the only other one of any prominence is soricine--meaning "resembling a shrew mouse." Now, let me ask you, what resembles a shrew mouse but a shrew mouse? Perhaps we all just have to observe nature more carefully so that we can learn its "shapes." Once we have learned them, and the words that go along with them, we may have developed such a good an useful vocabulary that our words will sing.

Serpulite

If you just relied on the Latin serpula, meaning "small serpent," and then extrapolated from that definition to serpulite, you would become confused very quickly. In "Linnaeus speak" Serpula is a genus of annelid worm. Here are some fascinating pictures of hemitricia serpula. They look like Rolled Gold pretzels, don't they? Thus, we have a bunch of words, such as serpulid, serpulidan, serpuline, serpulite, serpulacean, serpulean to describe this annelid family. Something serpulite is "a fossil serpula, also a formation containing these." If we want to emphasize the shape or form of the serpula, we should use the word serpuloid, "resembling or characteristic of the serpulae." But with the pictures firmly in mind, you can go to the store with your beloved now and talk about the serpuloid shapes of pretzels. See how far it gets you.

While on serpula, we should wander above in the dictionary to serpigo, which has to do with herpes or shingles. Underlying the English words is the Latin verb serpere, which means "to creep" or "to crawl." The great words serpentine and serpiginous derive ultimately from this root. Thus, the Latin words learned in this essay should go far to help us describe the world more precisely.

Finishing with a Few "Bonus" Words

While rooting around the "se's" and "so's," I happened to run upon the "st's," which took me first of all to stiria, the Latin word for icicle or frozen droplet. Something stiriated has icicles pendent. The scientists, predictably, have taken over the word, such as in this 1712 quoation: "I observed several of the Stiriated Stalactitae..hanging down from the Bank-side." But why can't one speak poetically, or narratively, of stiriated eaves of a snow bedecked house? Or something may hang from another thing in a stiriated way. Just as some women can hug their men like vines or tendrils wrapping around a tree, so other things might hang from vehicles, buildings or trees like stiria. I think that earrings or some forms of makeup can hang from women in a stiriated fashion. Remember to distinguish stiriated from striated, which means "furrowed or streaked." Harte Crane could use the last word literarily: "Striated with nuances, nervosities, that we are heir to."

While studying the word stiriated, I came across a quotation which used a synonym that also took me on a little journey. From Sir Thomas Browne:

"Crystal is found sometimes in rocks, and in some places not much unlike the stirious or stillicidious dependencies of ice."

Stillicidious? I had to go further. The basic word is stillicide, which is derived from the Latin stilla, a "drop," and cadere, "to fall." It has nothing to do with killing anything. Therefore, one definition of stillicide is "a continual falling or succession of drops." Or, as everyone's mother used to say, "I can't stand that stillicide emanating from the kitchen water spout!" But the term also had a meaning in Roman, and later, English common law. Stillicide was the

"the dropping of rain-water from the eaves of a house upon another's land, or the servitude relating to this."

From Erskine's Principles of Scottish Law (1754), we have the following: "No proprietor can build, so as to throw the rain water falling from his own house immediately upon his neighbor's ground, without a special servitude, which is called of stillicide." Thus, when your neighbor's downspout causes water to pour into your yard or down into your basement, the proper response to him/her is to say, "What are you doing, mac? Do you think that the servitude of stillicide came with your property?" I think that after his/her blank stare, you would have an opening to get the person to change his approach. After all, if you can use this historical law terminology, someone might think that you have access to some pretty potent legal talent.

So I finish my last Re-bar word essay. I have learned a lot through that Bee, even though I only attended it once. But the spirit of its originators, Josh and Ben, will continue among all of us who take their lead to peruse words that may be off the beaten track but, nevertheless, open up worlds of depth and incredible beauty and wonder. Had I not realized in 2004 how few words I knew, I would never have started seriously studying the dictionary. Had I not kept losing (or placing 2nd) in spelling bees, I never would have discipined myself to take up this kind of "word-related" writing. Now, I am on my own, which is a good thing. Learning isn't complete until you can do it on you own. So, I hope, will you, especially as it relates to words and the worlds they open.

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