The 98th Scripps National Spelling Bee finished up on May 28 in Washington, D.C. Its winning word was bromocriptine, correctly spelled by 14-year-old Shrey Parikh, of Rancho Cucamonga, CA.
According to the USA Today piece on that meet, this year’s winning word means “a polypeptide alkaloid that is a derivative of ergot and mimics the activity of dopamine.” It won Parikh more than $52,000.
I did not watch the event myself, but as I understand it, young Shrey clinched it in a tie-breaking “spell-off” — a bout requiring the two competitors to spell as many words as possible in 90 seconds. Shrey beat his opponent by 7, correctly spelling 32 to her 25 — after which he calmly averred that because he practices fast, “it was just another day of spelling” for him.
In honor of that impressive feat, this week’s installment of “Weird Words” looks at a handful of Shrey’s 32 winners. For the record, while these columns usually cull from a selection of my hard-copy dictionaries, this batch is so obscure that most will be defined off the internet. Merriam-Webster’s website (hereafter, M-W) was especially helpful.
Balintawak (buh-lin-tuh-WOCK, noun) – While it is the name of a region in the Philippines’ Quezon City, as a common noun it designates “a native dress of Filipino women consisting of dress and skirt woven of local fibers with a kerchief and apron to match.” In addition to providing this definition, M-W also tells us that the word is from the native Philippine Tagalog language (“tuh-GA-log”).
Chikungunya (chick-en-GOON-yuh [with some variants], noun) – An infection caused by a mosquito bite and characterized by a variety of symptoms (fever, swelling, rash, headache) — but most notably by excruciating pain. It is rarely fatal, though the associated joint pain can last for years. (Wikipedia)
Iguape (ee-GWAH-peh, noun) – Named for a port city of Brazil, iguape is a native Tupi term used as an alternate name for the candlenut. These are borne by a tropical tree of that name and used for oil in paints and varnishes; their oil can also make candles — hence the name. (Microsoft Encarta Dictionary)
Monadnock (muh-NAD-nock, noun) – “A mountain or rocky mass that has resisted erosion and stands isolated in an essentially level area” (American Heritage).
For us in the Northeast, the term may be most familiar as the name of a mountain in New Hampshire (it is famously mentioned in Thornton Wilder’s well-known play Our Town). Actually, the common noun is taken from that New England peak, which originally derived its name from the Algonquian language.
The world’s most famous monadnock, however, is almost certainly Uluru, or Ayer’s Rock — a massive copper-colored monolith in Central Australia. Sacred to indigenous peoples, Uluru is almost spooky in its size and isolation; look up some photos!
A monadnock can also be called an inselberg — a German word meaning “island mountain.”
Rapakivi (rap-uh-KEE-vee, noun) – A coarse red granite quarried in Finland; it is an igneous rock characterized by large rounded crystals and often used for building in Russia (M-W and Wikipedia).
Tlachtli (noun) – “A ball game played by Central American Indians (as the Aztecs and Mayas) in which the players endeavor by the use of only the leg, hip and elbow to send a solid rubber ball through two rings set vertically in the walls of an I-shaped court” (M-W).
A Nahuatl word, this is tough to pronounce — with not one but two instances of the common Nahuatl consonant blend tl, which works pretty much the way you would think (i.e., NAH-wattle). The ch is pronounced as in church, and stress is on the first syllable — with a long E at the end: TLATCH-lee.
Probably as tough to play as it is to say.
