Words from 1997 Kids Spelling Bee

In a previous essay I listed about 25 words which were given to spellers in the last several rounds of the 1997 Bee, many of which words sliced through them like a scythe through Kansas wheat in June. I would have been fairly upset had I been in the Bee in that year because fully 25% of these "near the end" words don't even appear in the OED. Though they appear in the "correct" unabridged, these are absent from the OED: anabibazon; apastron; longirostrine; hypokalemia, nephalism; and turbinado. But rather than begin with these words (I have already dilated long enough on longirostrine), let me go down the list two words below where I ended and pick on tachytely for a minute. I got this word wrong, as did the poor child that was called upon to spell it. It also doesn't appear in the OED and has only a few "non gibberish" search results in Google. I decided to do some research on the term to learn how obscure and unused it really is, and here is what I discovered.

Inventing Tachytely

Tachtely was actually invented in the early 1940s by the evolutionist and paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson (1902-84). He earned his doctorate in geology and paleontology at Yale and was, in the 1930s, already a distinguished paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. He completed in 1942 (published in 1944) what one source calls a "major revolutionary text" entitled Tempo and Mode in Evolution. Well, it was Simpson's theory that things evolve either slowly, normally, or quickly. Kind of a "Duh" point, but I am sure his discussion of the subject was much more sophisticated. In any case, he decided to invent terms to describe each of these rates of evolutionary change. For those creatures that evolved slowly, he said they experienced bradytely (bradus is Greek for "slow"); those evolving in a "medium" rate experienced horotely and those moving right along experienced tachytely. Tachytely comes from the two words meaning "quick" and "end" or "goal." We know a tachometer in a car measures how many RPM's the engine experiences; thus tachytely is the speed at which the evolutionary organism moves along its path. Now, as far as I can tell, one prominent evolutionist, the long-lived Sewall Wright (1889-1988), picked up on Simpson's terminology but no one else has done so--except Webster's Third New International Dictionary. Hence, its appearance in the Spelling Bee. I think, however, if the creators of the kids' Bee have the gall to use a word like this, each member of the "spelling committee" or whatever it is called, should be required to do a research paper on George Gaylord Simpson, detailing his contributions to evolutionary biology. Then, maybe they would learn something, too.

Returning to the List

Two of the five non-OED words listed above are from astronomy--anabibazon and apastron. In fact, a later term, cepheid, also refers to an astronimical phenomenon. Thus, if the children had taken God's advice to Abraham, to "look towards heaven and number the stars" (Gen. 15:5), they too might have gotten theses words correct. Well, I am not just going to repeat the online definition of anabibazon (you can look it up), but the word apastron occurs rather frequently online, and there are several images of it, too. Here is what I know. In a binary star system, each star moves around the other in an elliptical orbit. The point of maximum separation between the two stars is called the apastron. The point of closest approach between the stars is called the periastron. Cepheids (the term is always capitalized where I have seen it) are "population I giant yellow stars, pulsing regularly and contracting, resulting in a regular oscillation of its luminosity." It is like a "heartbeat" star--constantly pulsing back and forth with light. Some of these Cepheids are 10-100X more luminous than our sun. I think the term could be brought into our general vocabulary. You know how we speak of someone as not the "brightest bulb" in the room. Well, how about if we change the image slightly and say that a person is "not exactly a Cepheid." I think this, in fact, would elicit more comment from people. Cepheus was a king in Greek mythology, the husband of Cassiopeia and the father of Andromeda. They all ended up in the heaven as constellations after being chased, in all likelihood, by some antique creature.

Oh, while we are in the heavens, did you know that there are officially 88 constellations in the heavens? In antiquity about 48 were named, mostly by the geometer Ptolemy, but in 1982 the International Astronomical Union established definite boundaries for the present 88 constellations. Most of them are named from the Greek myths. My, just think, another 88 things to memorize, though the effort would be wonderfully rewarded because you would also have to know 88 stories from antiquity. And, if you learned all these things, just think where it might lead you!

Finishing some "Non-OED" Words

The other three non-OED words from the first 30 or so words are hypokalemia, nephalism and turbinado. Let's close this essay with a word on each. As this helpful Wikipedia article says, hypokalemia is a "potentially fatal condition in which the body fails to retain sufficient potassium to maintain health." Also known as "potassium deficiency" (why aren't those two words enough?), the word "hypo" means "low," and "kal" refers to "kalium," which is Latin for potassium (remember your periodic table from HS Chemistry?). Oh, by the way, learning the periodic table should come directly after learning the 88 constellations. There are, I think, 109 elements here, so if you really took some time to learn all of both, and followed permutations and rivulets to your heart's desire, you probably would be ready to start Ph. D. work in any number of fields.

Whoops. I just made a mistake. Nephalism is in the OED. Sorry. We still have to learn it. Nephalism is complete abstinence from alcohol. It is derived from the Greek word "nephalos," meaning "sobriety." I don't know when the term was invented, but it sounds like a early-mid 19th century coinage, when the temperance movement began. In fact, I found the following book title: Nephalism the true temperance of scripture, science and experience by James Miller (1861). Again, I don't think anyone will be rushing out to buy it, though I wonder how he explains John 2:1-11. I wonder if nephalism and teetotalism ever vied with each other for supremacy as words. Miller argues in the book that "The Nephalist..possesses a comparative immunity from contagious diseases." Huh? I just found that teetotalism originated in 1834: "The flame of tee-totalism was communicated at this meeting."

Finally, turbinado is a kind of sugar cane extract made by steaming unrefined raw sugar. But is this word always capitalized? Other brands of raw sugar are Muscovado and Demerara. Well, I think I will just let that one sit for today. Enough words for now!

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