Grant and Martha recently served as expert spellers at the San Diego Council on Literacy’s annual adult spelling bee, but don’t let the age group or philanthropic mission fool you-spelling bees are always i-n-t-e-n-s-e. The word Rorschach shall forever haunt them, but they also took away a new favorite — homologate, meaning to sanction or officially approve. As in, “I’m Joe Candidate, and I homologate this message.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Adult Spelling Bee”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette. Not long ago, Grant, you and I were asked to participate in that spelling bee for adults.
It was a fundraiser for Literacy Council, and we did really well.
And they raised a ton of money.
They raised a ton of money, but, you know, competing in a spelling bee as an adult is at least as intense as you do it when you’re in elementary school, isn’t it?
Are you still galled?
Let’s just say that neither you nor I will ever misspell the name of that inkblot test again.
Rorschach!
Rorschach!
They got it wrong.
We put an H where there wasn’t an H.
We did.
R-O-R-S-C-H-A-C-H.
And not that I’ve been festering or thinking too much about this, but I did Google the hell out of it.
Of course you did.
And I found that on the German Wikipedia site, the spelling that we gave is listed as a common misspelling, even among Germans.
Well, so Germans get it wrong.
Yeah, so I feel pretty good.
Yeah, that was painful though, wasn’t it?
It was painful.
Especially since we thought it was right.
But we learned other things.
We did.
We learned other words that we may never use again.
But there’s one that I’d like to popularize.
Oh, please.
And that’s homologate.
Do you remember that?
Homologate.
I do remember that, yeah.
Spell it.
H-O-M-O-L-O-G-A-T-E.
Very good.
Homologate.
And it means?
I don’t remember.
Right.
Why would you remember?
It means to sanction or to allow or to approve or confirm officially.
So I’m thinking that to make that next election cycle bearable, maybe we could get candidates to say at the end of their political ads things like,
I’m John Smith and I homologated this message.
What do you think?
Sounds naughty, actually.
Sort of.
Well, all the better.
It’s like masticating every meal.
Really?
We’d love to hear your language questions, your thoughts about words.
You can call us 877-929-9673 or send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.
Thank you.
