2005 National Spelling Bee, Essay 17

I am excited about most of the words I would like to write about from this round, since they lead us down interesting byways. Sometimes even are useful words. I only have 15/71 words from this round that I think are worth writing about; most of Round 4 was, like Round 3, relatively easy. One word from Round 3 still remains. Here they are: vellication, mugient, pruritus, tonitruous, edulcorate, musteline, nasute, indiscerptible, ustion, obtumescence, cyclolysis, cabretta, plesiobiosis, suffrutescent and arcology. Hm. Come to think of it, I think I want to comment also on laparoscopy and narcohypnia. We probably will get lost in words before we go too far.

I. Vellication--and Words for Bodily Movements/Noises

A vellication is a twitching or convulsive movement, especially of a muscle. Its "obsolete" meaning included pulling, tickling, titillation, or other kinds of bodily irritation. Titillation, now there is an interesting word. It goes back to the 15th century, is derived from Latin, and means "excitement or stimulation of the mind or senses" or a sensation of being tickled; a tingling, an itching." In his 17th century literary monstrosity on the Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton wrote: "The five senses, of touching, hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, to which you may add Scaliger's sixth sense of titillation if you please." Scaliger--now there's a name that would be interesting to pursue, the 16th century Classical scholar and polymath. We can't do so here.

But what I can give here is a partial listing of terms I have collected in the past year describing various words for bodily movements or noises.

1. Psellism, balbutience, Hottentotism--"stuttering"
2. Nictitate--"wink"
3. Sternutation--"snoring"
4. Anorthopia--"squinting"
5. Stertorousness--"deep breath, snoring"
6. Borborygmus--"rumble of stomach"
7. Eructation--"belch, burp"
8. Jactitation--"twitch, tug, pull"
9. Oscitate--"yawn, gaze stupidly or with sleepiness"
10. Osculate--"kiss"
11. Pruritus--"itch"

II. Pruritus

Pruritus, derived from the Latin pruritus, means "localized or generalized itching due to irritation of sensory nerve endings from organic or psychogenic causes." Itching, then, is the key. Why do we itch? Because we have prurigo (pru RYE go), a chronic inflammatory skin disease which makes us itch. Something affected by prurigo is pruriginous, which certainly will be a word in a future Bee. I thought immediately to a passage from the NT with the word "itching" in it: "For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires," (II Tim. 4:3). Itching ears? Not the way we speak. I looked up the Greek and saw that the Greek for "itch" is knetho, and I immediately realized why our English word for itching is derived from the Latin rather than Greek.

But one other thing interested me about "pruritus" and that was its connection with prurient. I first learned this word as a teenager when, I guess, I was supposed to have developed prurient interests in almost everything. Indeed, the word prurient is derived from the present participle of prurire and means "to itch, long for, be wanton." Thus, whenever I see the word prurient again, I will think about the itch, the titillation (also an "itch"), the indefinable tingling that makes us WANT what is before us.

III. Mugient

I never recall running into this word prior to my study of the 2005 Bee, but it does bring a smile to my lips. Derived from the Latin mugire (meaning to bellow or moo) and not too different from the Greek myzein (meaning to moan) and mukasthai (meaning to bellow), mugient means "making a lowing sound; bellowing." But the Century takes us a little further when it says that mugient can also describe the blaring of a trumpet, the rumbling of an earthquake, the roaring of thunder or the creaking of a mast. I would say it is an onomatopoetic word, and it refers to the drone, whirr, noise of a variety of things. "A mugient noise arose from the busy workshop." Even though the OED says that mugient is rare, it quoted a source from 1646 that provided an even rarer synonym: "This mugiency or boation." Boation, derived from the Latin boare, is an obsolete word (until we reclaim it) meaning "bellowing or roaring," and it seemed to live and die in the 17th-18th centuries.

Quickly Now

Let's cover some of the others more quickly. Tonitruous is a useful word meaning "full of thunder" or "fulminating." The Latin tonitruare, to thunder, appears in noun form in the Vulgate of Ps. 76:19 (Eng. Ps. 77), "vox tonitrui tui in rota apparuerunt," or "the crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind..." (why is apparuerunt in plural?) Words related to tonitruous have a utility in English. We an have a tonitruant writer or tonitrual guns. I like a literary quotation from 182: "Increase Mather had a tonitruous cogency in his perorations." One could speak of MLK Jr's tonitruous delivery at the March on Washington in Aug. 1963. Note that a synonym for tonitruous is fulminating. Make sure you distinguish between fulminate, which means to thunder, and fulgurant, which means "flashing" or fulgurous, which is "lightning-like." You never can be too careful with words.

Musteline means resembling a weasel or a marten, and nasute means either having a keen critical faculty, a strong sense of smell or a long nose. Well, I guess we have to stop for a minute and get to the bottom of nasute. The Latin word nasutus means "having a long nose." It is interesting to me that the figurative use of nasute came first. From the mid-17th century comes the phrase: "the Nasuter Criticks of this age," and so the word means "sagacious" or "having a keen critical faculty." We might say that a person "has a nose for" something, meaning that they have good taste or critical judgment. By the 18th century, however, it meant to have a strong sense of smell and, in the 19th, it took on its scientific meaning as "having a pronounced proboscis." Thus, if we were to talk about a nasute critic today we would not be understood at all; and even if people knew the word, they wouldn't be sure if we were referring to a "long-nosed" critic or a "perceptive" critic. But let's bring it back. If we can have hirsute, why can't we have nasute? Well, let me "tickle" or "titillate" you by saying that there is a scientific phrase called "fornicate nasus," which has nothing to do with having sex with someone's nose. You'll have to go on to the next essay to meet this and other fourth round words.

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