Free Rice Words--Levels 51-55; Introduction

When the "Free Rice" web site was launched in October and immediately caught the attention of many people, the words were divided into 50 levels of difficulty. I wrote three essays on those words, but I felt the list was too easy and that people would soon exhaust their interest in the site because they would quickly get to 50, stay there, see the same words, get bored and stop giving rice to the world. That is what happened to me, even though I decided to go "as fast as I could" one one occasion, and I earned about 20,000 grains of rice for hungry people in a very short time. So, I left the site. But then I read that five new levels of words had been added, 51-55, which I simply had to check out. Indeed, the inventor has given us hundreds of new, and usually obscure, words which are a delight to any logophile. It took me most of yesterday to master these extra five levels. But what it really caused me to do, as expected, was to take detailed detours on many of the words so that I can internalize not only their meaning but the worlds out of which they come. These several essays introduce you to several of the new "Free Rice" words.

Preliminary Thoughts

He introduced us to several obscure words. For example, I didn't know the kwacha was the Zambian currency, the pesewa was the Ghanaian currency, the likuta was the Zairian currency, the mongo was from Mongolia, the leva from Bulgaria or the qindar was the Albanian currency, but now I do. I didn't know, also, that a mongo was 1/100 of a tugrik. Indeed, the National Senior Bee last year tested us on ouguiya, the Mauretanian currency, which I happened to get right. And, this article talks about the Malagasy ariary. In addition, he gave us the kor, a Biblical unit of measurement that equals 10 ephahs. The kor is also known as a homer. Study these 12 new words and you can hit almost anything out of the park.

I think the word that took the prize for obscurity, however, was brei. I certainly didn't know the word, and his humorous selection of choices included a kind of cheese, but the last thing I would have selected was the answer, defined only as the "Afrikaans 'r' sound." Huh? I looked up the word in the OED, and the only entry was from biochemistry: "Living tissue which has been ground or finely cult into a pulp for experimental purposes..." But one online dictionary had this to say: "brei (vb, intr): to speak with a uvular 'r', esp. in Afrikaans." I guess that is what he was gunning for. The problem with having a good memory is that I will never forget the term now, though I think I will have scant opportunity to use it.

One of the different, and actually very attractive, features of word list 51-55 was the selection of four choices given us. These are often filled with lots of humor (perhaps that is what happens to you when you spend your time on this), but often the humor helps you choose the right word. For example, one of the words was gangrel. The four possible definitions provided were: (a) wanderer; (b) deadly infection; (c) mixed breed dog; and (d) criminal group. Of course, the deadly infection is gangrene; the mixed breed dog is a mongrel; I am not sure what he had in mind for a criminal group--maybe a gang. But this left the door open to the right answer--wanderer. From 1870: "This gangrel thief thought fit to tread/ The grass to mammocks by my head." By the way, mammocks, a word that first appeared as a verb in Shakespeare's Coriolanus (I.iii), and it means "shreds" or "tatters."

Another example of this was the word gault. The four possible definitions were: (a) type of rock; (b) heavy clay; (c) ancient France; (d) ancient Frenchman. You could immediately eliminate (c) and (d) because the word that stands behind those has to do with "Gaul," and not "gault." But as to (a) and (b), there is no way of determining. The answer happens to be (b). From Lyell in 1833: "Gault, a provincial name in the east of England for a series of beds of clay and marl, the geological position of which is between the upper and lower greensand."

One more example is interesting. Cretonne was defined either as: (a) preservative; (b) heavy fabric; (c) crude person; or (d) toast cubes. I knew the word already, but it is easy to see what the person is getting at. Toast cubes are croutons; a crude person is a cretan. Thus, even if you didn't know the word, you would be down to a 50/50 chance. But what is wonderful about words is once you know the answer, you can look it up online, and you begin to learn a lot not simply about cretonne but about other kinds of fabric. This web site, for example, tells us all about cretonne and sateen and chintz. But then I had to stop and think for a moment. I knew the word "chintzy" and I wondered to what extent it derived from the fabric. Originally the word chintzy came into English in 1851 (chintz is much older) and meant: "decorated or covered with chintz; suggestive of a pattern in chintz." But then there follows: "Also in extended use: suburban, unfashionable, petit-bourgeoise, cheap, mean, stingy." Chintz was at first a name for the painted or stained calicoes imported from India, though now is a name for cotton cloths fast-printed with designs of flowers, etc.

One Quibble

I am so grateful to the maker of this site for giving us hundreds of new words which we normally wouldn't use or know that I hesitate even to enter in a quibble, but I will. The word was armarium, and the "correct answer" was a doctor's library. This didn't look right to me, and I decided to do some research on the subject. The OED has no entry for armarium, though the Unabridged does, but the OED has armary/armarie. It is derived from the Latin armarium, a "place for arms or tools (arma), chest, closet, ambry. It is also used in medieval Latin esp. for 'bookcase, library.'" So, the "extant representative" of armary, a word used by Wyclif for 'library,' is ambry. An ambry is a "repository or place for keeping things: a storehouse, treasure; a cupboard (either in the recess of a wall or as a separate article of futniture); a safe; a locker.." A quick search under "Armarium and library" yielded several abbeys of medieval Europe where the "extensive armarium or library" adjoined the sacristy or the abbot's chapel... I just didn't find any reference to armarium as being a "doctor's library," unless the doctor was a doctor of theology.

Well, I learned so much from the new words that this is, indeed, a weak complaint. Let's move in the next essay to some of the theological/legal terms that I learned.

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