Additional "Ci's" and "Cl's" in the Collegiate (I)

While taking a break from reading Debby Applegate's excellent new biography on Henry Ward Beecher, I decided to return to some words from the Collegiate since, after all, the National Senior Spelling Bee is next week in Cheyenne. I have conflicting feelings as I write some of my final essays on words before the Bee begins. On the one hand, I am better "prepared" than any other year, having reviewed the words from the National Student Bees, the 23,000-word online list and generally having considerably deepened my acquaintance with English words. Yet, on the other hand, I have only haphazardly, at best, studied the Collegiate this year. Thus, I could get ambushed by almost anything...

Some "C" Words

I actually was going to begin with some "ch" to "cl" words, but must digress for a moment to caipirinha. It is defined as a Brazilian drink consisting usually of cachaca (a kind of rum--not in the Collegiate), lime or lemon jucie, sugar and crushed ice. I knew I needed to learn the word, so when I was out with a friend for drinks, I ordered one! I didn't much enjoy it, but I got a word out of it. I discovered that when I looked up caipirinha on line, I ran into the world of Brazilian drinks. No time for that now, but the guarana is listed (present in the Collegiate).

I did the same thing when I went out to dinner with another friend at a Mexican place. There was some kind of taco or chimichanga"de nopales." I recall the word nopalry from a Kids Bee (it isn't in the Collegiate), and I suspected that nopales was the Spanish word for "cactus" (correct), and so I ordered it. Again, I didn't like the meal too much (don't worry, they take out the stickers!) but I now know I will never misspell anything relating to nopales, nopaline or, for that matter, no parking. By the way, in a move that should anger every dedicated speller, the OED has nopalry as nopalery, with nopalry given as an alternate form.

Here is a list of some "c" words on which I paused as I was working through the Collegiate dictionary. I have taken care to make sure that none of them are the same as in my Spellers Diary I page. They are: chukka, chukker, chunter, churro, chymotrypsinogen, cimetidine, cinchona, ciprofloxacin, circinate, cire, citrulline, cladoceran, cleidoic, cleistogamous, clintonia, clivia, clonazepam, clonidine and clotrimazole. You will note the profusion of drug-related terminology here. I think I will have to know a ton of these terms to be competitive this year. Let's take a moment with some of these.

Chukka and chukker come from the same world--polo. I grew up in a town where polo was popular; I went to a theological seminary just a mile away from the well-named Myopia Hunt Club, where polo players trained. Thus, I should know polo, but I don't. My family wasn't rich; I never learned the game. But a chukker is a playing period of a polo game, while a chukka is a ankle-high leather boot with a few pairs of eyelets or buckles, used in playing polo. However, the popularity of these boots has grown so that they are now designed for almost anything except polo.

Though I am sure I could spell chunter correctly, I write about it because of its meaning as an imitative word. It means "to mutter, mumble; grumble, find fault." I thought it would be a word of modern origin, but it goes back to the 17th century. D.H. Lawrence, in the 20th century, could write: "A thin old woman...was chuntering her head off because it was her seat." Or, more recently: "Paul's telephone rang...There was long chuntering on the line.

A churro is a sweet Latin American/Spanis snack consisting of fried dough, typically having a ribbed, baton-like shape and dusted with sugar and cinnamon sugar. Here is an article on the churro, with pictures. It says that churros can be difficult to find outside of Hispanic street stands and eating establishments. As luck would have it, however, it is sold in Disney theme parks. Just goes to show you--if you want to learn more words, go to Disneyland.

Drug or Chemical Terms

A tongue-twister which really falls nicely into place when you think it through is chymotrypsinogen. The word first appeared in 1933 in the following context: "This note describes the isolation from fresh pancreas of an active crystalline protein which is converted by minute amounts of trypsin into a powerful proteolytic enzyme...The inactive protein has been called chymo-trypsinogen and the active protein chymo-trypsin." I don't really know what this means, but I will want to learn it. Cimetidine is a word derived from pharmacology, and it described as an "imidazole" (word appears in the Collegiate and is an antimetabolite related to histamine) which is used in the treatment of peptic ulcers. Thus, if you were person who had such an ulcer, I don't believe that you would have to study this word; it would run off your lips like nursery rhymes from a preschool teacher.

The way I approach any subject about which I know little is historically. Thus, I discovered that cimetidine was the result of a project at Smith, Kline & French (Now GlaxoSmithKline) to develp a histamine receptor antagonist to suppress stomach acid secretion. Histamine stimulates the secretion of stomach acid, but traditional antihistamines (in the mid-1960s) had no effect on acid production. Thus, something new was called for. This drug was approved by the FDA in 1979 and has been a major money-maker for the company. It is marketed under the label of "Tagamet" today, and here is an article entitled "Tagamet: A medicine that changed people's lives." So significant was the discovery of "histamine H2-receptor antagonists, leading to the development of Tagamet, that Tagamethas been declared an "International Historic Chemical Landmark." Quite some accomplishment for a word (cimetidine) that few know how to spell. And, as this article argues, cimetidine was developed in a revolutionary way for chemistry--from logical principles (the physiology of acid secretion) rather than from the chance discovery of a plant or microbial extract. Thus, if we had time to study and ears to hear, we could learn tons not only about the development of this drug but of an approach to practical science that has enhanced the lives of hundreds of thousands. Aren't you humbled that you also, along with me, know so little (unless this stuff was old hat to you)?

Conclusion

Let's conclude with words clustering around cinchona (sin KO nah). It is, in a word, a genus of evergreen trees or shrubs with a fragrant white or pink panicled flowers growing in the Andes. It is cultivated for the sake of the bark. And, the OED tells us the story behind this word (we also have cinchonism--a disorder due to excessive use of cinchona-- and cinchonine, which is a chemical found in the cinchona bark). The tree was named in 1742 by Linnaeus in honor of the Countess of Chincon (Spain) who, in 1638 as vice-queen of Peru, was cured of a fever by application of Peruvian bark. As a result she brought a supply of it to Spain, and it became popular in Europe. Thus, cinchona is known as a "febrifuge"--another great word.

Let this suffice for one essay. If I have this much fun taking one word at a time, I really will be satisfied however well I do in Cheyenne on June 16.

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