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Round 2 was very difficult and eliminated more than 70 spellers. This should have left around 195 spellers in Round 3, but only about 95 actually spelled words in Round 3. I am going to have to ask Scott Firebaugh, whose daughter Stacia competed well that year, for clarification. In any case, Round 3 had fairly easy words, but still about 26 spellers fell on the words. The words I select to exposit in this and the next essay are not those which I had trouble spelling, but are words that open up little worlds that I would like to show you.

The following words interest me: priscilla, fumulus, lithochromy, anorthopia, jubilarian, xenocentric, replicatile, voltammetry, nerolytic, laterigrade, tectogene, poliosis, petrel and tussocked. I also am interested in wizzled, transilience, plexure and vellication, though I would consider these four to be "easy" words.

1. Priscilla is the name of a girl, of course, but what they were looking for here was a kind of curtain. Web sites abound that sell these things. One says: "Ruffled Priscilla Curtains are one of our most popular curtain styles." They have wide ruffles on the inside and bottom edges of the window treatment. As a matter of fact, they seem to have ruffles all over the place. But what I don't understand is that there are also Stacey and Jessica curtains (don't ask me to distinguish them), but I bet these don't have their separate entries in the Unabridged. I would have skipped the word were I designing the Bee. More interesting to me is the Christian heretical group known as the Priscillianists, named after a 4th Century Bishop of Avila, Priscillian. The OED suggests that the "heresy" taught by the good (or maybe not-so-good) Bishop was "Gnostic" or "Manichaen" or "Montanist." Make up your mind, OED. There are worlds of difference among these groups. Well, its curtains for sure on this discussion, so let's move on.

2. Fumulus is a cool word, and that may explain why the OED doesn't have it. It is a combination of fumus, which means "smoke" and ulus, a diminutive, and means "a thin cloud resembling a veil and forming at any level." I don't know when it was coined, but it sounds like it is a fairly recent term.

3. Lithochromy can also be quickly disposed of, for it means "painting on stone." You should know the Greek word lithos, and chromy simply means "color." Interestingly, the word chromolithography, to mean the same thing, was coined in 1885, about a half-century after lithochromy, but never caught on. The OED gives the first attestation in 1837: "The peripteral temple by me in Munich Park, which, to the best of my knowledge, constitutes the first example of lithochromy in the present day." Only problem, it doesn't list the author. So, the irony is that we have the word but not the author, who so much wanted to be remembered as the first who presented modern lithochromy. Oh, peripteral means "having columns all around," and would probably have been a better word to use in the Bee than lithochromy.

4. Anorthopia joins with my growing list of refined words to describe human gestures or sounds. We have oscitate, osculate, nictitate, jactitate, stertorous, sternutation, and several others about which I have written. Now, with anorthopia, we have another. It means "obliquity of vision, squinting." I suppose we are more familiar with the second definition. It is easy to dismantle the Greek. The alpha-privative picks up an "n" when it precedes a vowel; "ortho" means right or straight (orthodontist; orthodoxy) and "opia" has to do with vision. "Not straight vision" is your problem, then. An anorthoscope, invented in the early 1840s, was an optical toy for viewing distorted images (i.e., optical illusions). The 1842 definition talks about intending to produce "a peculiar kind of anamorphoses," which would have been a better word to use in the Bee. An anamorphosis is a distorted projection or deformation of something.

5. Again, jubilarian is quite easy to spell, but it is a word that we should know, even though we don't. The concept of the jubilee is biblical. Going back to Leviticus, the jubilee is a 50-year cycle after which time all debts are cancelled and a person/family gets to "start over again." It is a remarkable idea, but I don't think it was ever implemented in Israel. A jubilarian, however, is a person and in particular, a person in a religious order who has celebrated at least a half-century of ordained religious devotion. The word was first attested in English in 1782: "May 13th 1782 died age 79 the Rev. F. Saward Madew, OSF, a jubilarian, many years missionary at Ufton Court." Perfectly good word, but you won't find many occasions to use it, I bet.

6. Someone xenocentric is one who prefers a culture other than one's own. Comprised of "xenos," the Greek word for "outsider" or "stranger" and "centric," the word falls right into place when you know its "past." My eye fell down the page of the Unabridged to a few other words that are interesting that I want to mention: xenodochium and xenodocheionology. I am sure that all spellers would get the second one incorrect, so let's say a word about them. The word dochium is derived from the Greek verb dexesthai, which means "to receive," and therefore xenodochium is "a medieval house for the care of the poor, strangers, pilgrims, or the sick." Come to think of it, there is also xenodocheum which is the ancient Greek inn. The former is a Latinized form of the latter. Finally, xenodocheionology is "the lore of hotels and inns." I know that I will be ready for this word if they mention it in a future Bee!

7. With replicatile, I finish this essay. It is a fine word, meaning "capable of being folded back," and finds its home in entomology. It is derived from the fourth principal part of the verb replicare, to fold back. Usually it relates to wings of bees or birds, but I found an online reference to a "replicatile" ironing board. How about that? Such a board has a crease or bend in the middle and, I suppose, after you are finished using it you just fold it back. I wonder how many people go into Sears and ask the sales girl, "Ma'am, if you would, would you point me to the replicatile ironing boards?" I think that you would be shown the door posthaste. By the way, the "ile" ending is an "ability" ending, functioning like the "ile" in "ductile," for example.

Let's close with reference to one of the words which I will not go into in any depth. It is wizzled. Wizzled is a portmanteau word, combining wizened and shriveled, and means about the same as those words! So, we have the following similar-sounding words that communicate a similar thought: wizzled, withered, shriveled, wizened, wrinkled. Taking care with our words really refines our categories and makes our thoughts more precise.

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