OPINION For the love of words — bee offers new delights

LAURA MCFARLAND

Managing Editor

Attending hogmanay, a traditional Scottish celebration of New Year’s Eve, is a longheld dream of mine.

“But maybe I need to say that a little quieter,” I said, as the context was seeing the word while perusing my official binder of words a few minutes before the start of the 49th annual Richmond Times-Dispatch Regional Spelling Bee, held March 9 in Mechanicsville.

I’ve been helping with the spelling bee for several years, acting as the recorder in case a child or parent challenges a decision on a word. It’s not a glamorous job, and, thankfully, I am rarely called upon to put my replay skills into action. However, it does come with the aforementioned binder (lime green this year) filled with a whole host of new words I don’t know the meaning of, much less how to pronounce them, and the nerd in me enjoys the random education each year.

Before I dive into my annual exercise in lexigraphy (the art or practice of defining words), I want to give a special shout out to Chase Kinnier, a sixth grader at Powhatan Middle School, who represented Powhatan County in the spelling bee admirably, making it to the eighth round. Excel- lent job Chase! One of the words he spelled correctly, henchman, I admit to using more frequently than you might expect. Usually it is while watching a highly improbable action movie where the hero is able to dodge every bullet from dozens of bad guys and yet miraculously hit them every time. I always say, if I ever start looking for my own henchmen, they will have to pass a very stringent marksman test. I’m not even joking; there will be tests.

Also as a point of reference, the winning word this year, spelled correctly in the 30th round by a Charlotte County middle schooler, was barometer. Depending on a child’s age and experience with spelling bees, it is always interesting to see how they approach their turn. Do they hear the word once and plunge in or go all out, asking for the language of origin, a definition and for it to be used in a sentence?

Many of the words might seem obvious, but the trickery that is homonyms at times makes asking some of those questions critical. For example, in the same bee, contestants were asked to spell wield (to use especially with full command or power) and weald (a heavily wooded area). No discernable difference in how they are pronounced.

Alternate spellings can also be tricky, and in the case of this bee, extremely important. One speller was asked to spell caboodle (the way we saw it in our binders), which is simply a collection or lot. She spelled it as kaboodle and received the ding of the bell signifying she was wrong. She and her parents challenged it, and since the Merriam-Webster entry for kaboodle simply says “variant spelling of caboodle,” she re-entered the bee. By the way, the young lady, Joy-Den Wilson of Charlotte County, went on to win the bee.

The silly side of me always enjoys the silly sounding words, and there were plenty. I knew most of the ones that caught my eye: dillydally (to act with an unusual or improper slowness); flimflammer (one that gains his way by trickery and expedients); and codswallop (nonsense or drivel).

I don’t know why hooroosh (a wild, hurried or excited state or situation) tickled my fancy, but I have always been honest with our readers about my nerdiness, and I am not going to stop now.

A large number of the words I wasn’t familiar with are tied to plants (absolutely not my wheelhouse) and animals, which makes for fun Google searches to see what they look like. When I looked up tenuiroster, which is