Can You Guess These 10 Terms From the Scripps Spelling Bee?

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In songs, this kind of “leaning” grace note clashes with the melody just more than enough to make dissonance, then sweet resolution. It is popular for its ability to give you goosebumps: Envision Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, or the opening of Adele’s “Anyone Like You.”

The word is derived from “appoggiare,” an Italian verb meaning “to lean,” which in change comes from the Greek root “pod,” indicating “feet,” together with “podium,” “pedestal” and “podiatrist” — providers of aid.

Hundreds of Italian loanwords exist in English, especially in fields like classical new music or haute delicacies.

This term was the Scripps Bee’s profitable term in 2005, clinched by the 13-calendar year-aged Anurag Kashyap, who claimed experience “pure happiness” when he recited that victorious remaining “a” — pressure, then launch.

In the early 1990s, the British psychologist John Sloboda asked new music aficionados to believe of their favourite tear-jerking musical moments. Out of the 20 identified phrases, 18 featured an appoggiatura.

This whimsical adjective that means “utopian” is derived from a nonsense noun that is an anagram of “nowhere.”

The noun is the title of an 1872 novel by Samuel Butler. Satirizing Victorian culture, the British author concocted the phrase to explain a fantasyland that deifies bodily wellbeing and treats ailment as a legal offense.

The word trickled from literary obscurity into the common lexicon thanks in significant element to a Southern California grocery chain whose title also will come from the Butler e-book. That retailer has created an almost cultlike subsequent for its $22 almond butter and its smoothie collab with Hailey Bieber.

How does a niche fictional reference become a “real” term? Regularly, it’s when the term “speaks to a pocket of expertise that people today were being earlier lacking from the language,” claimed Yee-Lum Mak, a rhetoric scholar and the creator of “Other-Wordly.”

Not every corner of American lifestyle thirsts for an expression indicating “wellness utopia,” but for a certain dialect of Los Angeles English, “erewhonian” satisfies a lexical gap.

This adjective denotes foxiness. It emerged in the early 17th century by way of a several Latin variants, all relating to foxes or their cunning traits.

When the Swedish botanist (and homo sapien) Carl Linnaeus invented the binomial nomenclature program for classifying organisms in 1735, he employed this word’s Latin root “vulpes” as the genus for “true foxes.”

Numerous early publications about biology and drugs were published in Latin. Much of that terminology has been preserved (feel “larva” or “rhinoplasty”), which is why scientists at times audio like they’re speaking a overseas language: They are.

This word shares its foxy root with the identify of the Pokémon character Vulpix, a squash-hued fox with a bushy tail and fiery superpowers.

And if you’re a lover of The Times’s personal Spelling Bee match, you may well recall “vulpine” as the pangram from April 23, 2023.

In astronomy, it is when a few or extra celestial bodies configure in a ideal line (the Earth, sunshine and moon during a photo voltaic eclipse, for instance). But in poetry, it describes a type of consonant repetition — like alliteration, but not minimal to the beginnings of terms — or a fusion of words for rhythmic outcome.

The shortest English phrase to element 3 y’s, it is most very likely a compound of the Greek prefix “syn-,” that means “together with,” and “zygon,” meaning “yoke.”

Also descending from “zygon” are “zygote,” the merchandise of two reproductive cells coming alongside one another, and “zygomatic bone,” a.k.a. the cheekbone.

But amid best spellers, “syzygy” is beloved for its particularity: It’s a person of those singular English text that is pretty much difficult to spell if you do not presently know it.

Outlined by Merriam-Webster as “careless handwriting: a crude or illegible scrawl,” this word is a semantic cousin of “graffiti.”

Moving into English through the French verb “griffonner,” that means “to scrawl,” its Middle French ancestors provided “grifouner” (to scribble), “griffon” (stylus) and the suffix “-age” (meaning “the act of,” as in “tutelage” or “sabotage”).

“This term will make me believe of a griffin striving to hold a pen and having a hard time,” stated Ms. Mak, the rhetoric scholar, referring to the Greek mythological creature with an eagle’s head and wings and the entire body of a lion. The two phrases may well not be completely unrelated: “Griffe” is the French phrase for “claw,” and crafting with talons does seem tricky.

Still, charming as the word by itself may appear, griffonage might have fatal effects.

A 2016 Johns Hopkins University analyze uncovered that medical mistakes were the third-primary induce of demise in the United States, and both medical professionals and ethics researchers have suggested that doctors’ notoriously illegible handwriting could lead.

“This is a entertaining illustration of a phrase that properly describes alone,” reported Evan O’Dorney, the 2007 Scripps champion. It’s a piece of zany designed-up language whose definition is “zany designed-up language” — a nonsense term that implies “nonsense phrases.”

Lewis Carroll invented the expression for his 1871 novel “Through the On the lookout-Glass” it seems in a poem comprehensive of polysyllabic whimsy about a fearsome, serpentine beast.

This is technically a nonce phrase: a lexical product invented for a single-time, unique-event use (and which may possibly or may possibly not finally just take a seat at the table of every day English).

Carroll’s nonce legacy is illustrious. In addition to this word, we also have him to thank for coining the noun “snark” and the verb “chortle.”

Jabberwocky” enjoyed a pop-society renaissance in the mid-2000s many thanks to Jabbawockeez, a San Diego hip-hop dance group that received the to start with season of “America’s Finest Dance Crew” in 2008.

There’s some thing about this playful time period that seems to counsel its definition: a jumbled combination. Synonyms incorporate “ragbag” and “mishmash.”

Its before variations referred specifically to food: a stew consisting of meat, vegetables and other miscellaneous ingredients. One Medieval recipe referred to as for chopped goose, wine, drinking water, onions and herbs.

In Center English, the term was spelled “hochepoche,” derived from the root “hotch” indicating “to shake.”

“Hodgepodge” is also carefully connected to a authorized phrase, which dates back to the 13th century and often comes up when managing wills, trusts and divorces.

In estate regulation, that linguistic cousin, “hotchpot,” means “mixture of property” and refers to the course of action of combining and redistributing homes so all the beneficiaries get their truthful share — much like dishing out a stew, but with a lot more paperwork.

A flamboyant type of artwork and decoration, born of the 17th century’s French Baroque motion (the Palace of Versailles is a prime instance), but incorporating more asymmetry and a softer, pastel-leaning palette.

The word could possibly glance Italian, but it basically arrives from the French “rocaille,” which suggests “rock” or “shell” and describes the lavish botanical decoration that was applied (to extra, some may argue) in areas of Europe in the 1700s.

Considering the fact that the 19th century, English conversationalists have utilized the phrase to imply “dated” or “out of style,” its humorous phonetic bounce poking entertaining at the bygone aesthetic’s gaudiness.

It seems in the title and chorus of a 2010 Arcade Fireplace song, which starts off, “Let’s go downtown and look at the contemporary young ones,” and proceeds “Using terrific big words and phrases that they really do not fully grasp.”

A verb that means to deliver a very long, oscillating cry that can sign a range of powerful emotions, from grief to ecstasy.

A great deal like an onomatopoeia, this is a term whose sound demonstrates its content. “It’s a person of those people great imitative conditions in English, like ‘tintinnabulation,’ a tinkling sound, and ‘borborygmus,’ an intestinal gurgle,” reported the lexicographer Kory Stamper.

The vocalization characteristics in cultural celebrations throughout the environment, such as Mizrahi Jewish henna ceremonies, Hindu temple rituals and weddings in the Center East and North Africa, in which it’s frequently produced by women of all ages in the variety of a higher-pitched, joyous “Lililili!”

It also appears as a searching signal in the 1954 novel “Lord of the Flies” and as a spine-chilling war cry in the 1962 film “Lawrence of Arabia.”

And in 2022, when Morocco’s men’s soccer team designed it to the Environment Cup semifinals, you could hear people today rapturously ululate all over the globe, from the streets of Casablanca to the stadium in Qatar.

From the Yiddish expression for “wooden block,” this word was introduced to the U.S. by Jap European Jewish immigrants, and by the mid-20th century it had turn into mainstream American slang, together with other delightful loanwords including “schmuck,” “schlep,” “mensch” and “oy vey.”

The Centre for Used Linguistics estimates that, ahead of the Holocaust, about 11 million people today spoke Yiddish around the globe. Now, much less than a million individuals do, a very small portion of them as their indigenous tongue.

Percussive and monosyllabic, this phrase is phonetically as pleasurable to say as a curse term. And while it is technically an insult for a clumsy man or woman (a variety of “blockhead”), it’s much more endearing than vulgar.

Children of the 1990s may perhaps recall the publishing corporation named immediately after this word, which paired colourful crafts with how-to books on subjects as various as cat’s cradle, magic and blues harmonica.

As bee terms go, “klutz” is rather mainstream. But in typical, K-terms are some of the most difficult to spell, in accordance to opponents. “In our experience, the G’s, K’s and M’s have the greatest concentration of zingers,” stated Evan O’Dorney, the 1-time Scripps champ.

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