Spelling bee

[magid]

Actually, more like a spelling test. Yesterday afternoon, I went to try my spelling fu with 18 others, to see who'd get to be on the spelling team our company is sending to a fundraiser for adult literacy next month.

I did ok, a bit above average (mean, median, and mode :-). There were 26 words, each starting with a different letter.

What were the words? They're listed below, arranged from most often spelled correctly to least. And no, I didn't get the last one. I can spell it properly in Hebrew, though.

url
lovey-dovey
hibachi
claque
muntin
xyloid
novercal
inveigle
pterodactyl
scherzando
quisling
whisht
gutta-percha
blancmange
voussoir
exophthalmic
onomatopoeia
joual
ailurophile
dyspnea
yapok
kylikes
ferule
thalweg
zizith

Comments

[bitty.livejournal.com]

well, there are 7 i *know* i'd get, but the rest would have been guesses. they could have been *correct* guesses, but they're definitely words i wouldn't know by sight.

i was amazing at spelling bees as a child. this spelling bee put the fear of god into me.
or something.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I guessed well on a couple of them, and managed to miss at least one I thought I'd get for sure. It was fun, though.

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

So does that mean you are on the spelling team now?

[magid.livejournal.com]

Nope; there were enough people who did better than me. I might end up as an alternate, though.

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

That's unfortunate. You did better than I would, though. Besides being allergic to oatmeal, my family shares a mild dsylexia which seems to affect our ability to spell. We're all good at math, but none of us can spell.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty bad at spelling aloud, actually; it helped me that this was written, so I could write things down and see if they 'looked right' (I didn't realize 'til I was grown up that this doesn't work for lots of people.). Though I didn't know enough of these that there was a lot of guessing.

The family that de-oatmeals together, um...? :-)

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

I am better on paper than verbally, too, which makes that Cranium category of spelling backwards very difficult for me.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I haven't played Cranium, but I bet I'd suck at spelling backwards, too.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

Is that last word tzitzit? Interesting transliteration, if so, but there must be multiple acceptable spellings of it in any decent dictionary, nu?

[magid.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's the word, but apparently there's one official spelling in the official dictionary they use.

[bitty.livejournal.com]

well, march right on downstairs and smack 'em around till they correct the spelling!

[magid.livejournal.com]

Well, I did put the correct Hebrew spelling on my sheet, but no one seemed to count that...

Transliteration is a tricky thing. Using the 'th' at the end is an older accepted scheme that is unlikely to be chosen as an ideal these days, but once something's in the language one way...

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Hey! You made that word up! *points at any of half a dozen*

Good heavens. I mean, I know pterodactyl, but I've never even heard of about half those.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I didn't make them up; I'd never heard of lots of these!
I couldn't even figure out which letter to start ailurophile with until the rest of the words had been read and I could knock out the i, the e, and the y.

I was surprised more people didn't get blancmange, actually. We were making jokes about the Monty Python sketch with the tennis-playing blancmange.

[spwebdesign.livejournal.com]

I know I would have gotten 9 of these right -- and no, blancmange was not one of them -- but I doubt I would have correctly guessed more than maybe a couple of the others.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I was surprised to get a couple of the ones I totally guessed on (and was slightly annoyed that I was only a letter off on a couple of guesses (usually by a doubled letter that should've been single)).

I know, i know, i know

[missdimple.livejournal.com]

....at least one! :)

Muntin.

Does anyone else know what that is?

And can you name the alternative M word that means the same thing?

Re: I know, i know, i know

[magid.livejournal.com]

Well, they gave the definition at the bee (and in the correct key they handed out later), so, um, sorta. Not that I did before the bee, though.

Mullion? At least, that's what I kept thinking of when the reader was pronouncing it again after the definition.

(And I'd hope you'd know at least two! (Url being, well, self-spelling.))