The following blog entry was written by Sarah Chassé, a copy editor of READ, Writing, and a whole bunch of other Weekly Reader magazines.
Watching TV rots your brain, right? Not necessarily. I spent last night learning some great new vocabulary words from my television--and no, there isn't a new reality show called Playing Scrabble With the Stars. We're talking the finals of the 2007 Scripps National Spelling Bee, which aired live on ABC. The competition, held in Washington, D.C., featured 286 spellers from the United States and Canada. In the 13th round, eighth grader Evan M. O’Dorney of Danville, Calif., spelled the word serrefine (seh-ruh-FEEN) to become the Super Bowl of spelling’s newest champ.
OK, so maybe serrefine (an adjustable spring clamp used in cardiovascular surgery) isn't the most useful word—you can't exactly drop it into casual conversation. But it's still a cool word to know. Here are some other unusual words from the Scripps finals you can dazzle your friends and family with:
rascacio: (rah-SKAH-see-oh) a scorpion fish found in the western Atlantic Ocean from Cape Cod to Brazil
bouleuterion: (boo-leh-TEE-ree-on) a council chamber in ancient Greece
schuhplattler: (SHOO-plat-luhr) a traditional folk dance from Bavaria and Austria in which dancers rhythmically strike their thighs, their knees, and the soles of their feet
grognard: (groh-NAHR) an old soldier
aniseikonia: (ah-nigh-sigh-KOH-nee-uh) a defect of binocular vision in which the two retinal images of an object differ in size
My favorite word from the bee was definitely schuhplattler (just don't ask me to demonstrate it). Have a favorite word of your own that you'd like to share? Drop us a comment! (And make sure you spell your word correctly!)
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