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Having a Large
Vocabulary is Hot
by Mad Dog
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I’m not sure where the official Word Panel finds these
words, even though I read the rules on the spelling bee’s web site
four times — and obviously should have gone for five — but
personally I think if my spellchecker chokes on a word it shouldn’t be
allowed in the spelling bee. |
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There’s nothing more
embarrassing than being shown up by a 13-year-old who can spell words
you can’t even pronounce. Okay, maybe going to see Madagascar thinking
it’s a travelogue, having to tell people that Carrot Top is your
brother, or walking out of the bathroom with toilet paper stuck to your
shoe is worse. Especially if it’s at your wedding. As you walk down
the aisle. Of course should that happen you can console yourself with
the fact that when you’re standing at the altar you won’t have to
spell “appoggiatura” in order to put $30,000 in your pocket, all
you’ll need to do is mutter something that vaguely resembles your vows
and smile at newly gained relatives pretending you remember their names.
Had Anurag Kashyap of Poway, CA,
known this he might have gotten married rather than put himself through
the ordeal known as the 78th annual National Scripps Spelling Bee. After
all, there are perks that come with marriage you just don’t get when
you hang around a bunch of 8th-grade brainiacs whose idea of a good time
is to spend yet another evening spelling their way through volume 14 of
the Oxford English Dictionary looking for — yawn! — a word
they don’t know yet.
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I’d hate to think they spend
most of their waking hours getting their butts kicked all over the
school yard because they walk around spouting off words like quafure,
exsiccosis, and onychophagy, even when they are appropriate.
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Kashyap walked home with the first place prize this year, and
yes, he did it by spelling “appoggiatura,” a word that means melodic
tone, but I’m sure you knew that. Kashyap didn’t make a lucky guess.
Along the way he had to spell such words as exsiccosis,
ornithorhynchous, and tristachyous. I’m not sure where the official
Word Panel finds these words, even though I read the rules on the
spelling bee’s web site four times — and obviously should have gone
for five — but personally I think if my spellchecker chokes on a word
it shouldn’t be allowed in the spelling bee. For the record, I just
ran this paragraph through the spellchecker and it choked four times. If
it were human it would have flatlined (intransitive verb: to register on
an electronic monitor as having no brain waves or heartbeat; to die).
Please, don’t ask me how to spell it.
It’s reassuring to find out that
there are children who have a good vocabulary. Of course I’m assuming
they know when and how to use these words, not just how to spell them in
a contest. When is particularly important. I’d hate to think they
spend most of their waking hours getting their butts kicked all over the
school yard because they walk around spouting off words like quafure,
exsiccosis, and onychophagy, even when they are appropriate. The last
one, by the way, is a high falutin’ way of saying “nail biting,”
something I’m sure the kids’ parents do plenty of while sitting in
the audience wondering if all those nights foregoing Masterpiece
Theater reruns so they could hold more flash card drills was going
to pay off by bringing in enough money to pay for that first year of
college. Or at least the first year of community college and a nice
vacation.
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From
now on the word “hot” shall be known as the PHA — the Paris Hilton
Adjective. Face it, if you only use one adjective in your life you
should retain ownership of it. Paris, this one’s yours, babe. |
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Apparently our vocabularies are shrinking. According to one
source, the average number of words in a 14-year-old’s vocabulary has
dropped from 25,000 to 10,000 since 1950. That’s 300 words lost a
year, or almost one word every day. Not that you could tell this from
the spelling bee participants, but then again you can hardly call them
average, especially if their parents are around. Even more so if their
parents are around and bigger than you are. Go ahead, I dare you.
Obviously not everyone has a spelling
champ’s vocabulary. The other night I watched David Letterman
interview Paris Hilton and I’m not sure she said three words other
than “hot.” Her boyfriend is hot. Her new movie is hot. Her looking
vapid, blank, and like she was preoccupied with deciding what nail color
she wanted on her toes tomorrow, all the while completely missing
Letterman’s sarcasm, was hot. From now on the word “hot” shall be
known as the PHA — the Paris Hilton Adjective. Face it, if you only
use one adjective in your life you should retain ownership of it. Paris,
this one’s yours, babe.
The Oxford English Dictionary
has definitions for 231,100 words. Experts say the average educated
adult has a vocabulary of about 20,000 words, even though, like, most of
the time they only, you know, use a few of them over and over. If you
subtract the 47,000 words the dictionary’s editors admit are obsolete,
that still leaves 164,100 words which are hardly being used. Except, of
course, in the National Scripps Spelling Bee.
Now that the excitement of this
year’s spelling bee is over, and ESPN can return to their usual
programming — yes, they broadcast the finals! — we can all take a
tip from 13-year-olds like Anurag Kashyap and work hard to enlarge our
vocabularies. While we don’t need to sound like eggheads, it
wouldn’t hurt if we all sounded a bit smarter. After all, being smart
is hot.
©2005 Mad Dog
Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
These columns appear in better newspapers across the country.
Read them while checking my spelling.
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