More words I didn’t know

In the process of reviewing some helpfully provided word lists, in preparation for the spelling bee, I encountered some new words (a nice side effect!). Here they are:

  • cenacle: a group of people, as in a discussion or literary group (hey, like my book club!)
  • ballottement: a palpatory technique for detecting or examining a floating object in the body
  • gallimaufry: a confused jumble of things (can be applied to food, e.g., hash or ragout) — this one wasn’t from studying pre-bee, but from Tim post-bee. Awesome word!

I also came across a few words I probably would have misspelled, prior to this refresher. I’m recording them here in hopes this will help me remember them correctly in the future!

  • barbiturate: for some reason, I didn’t know it had an r in it
  • bellwether: not -weather
  • bouillon: not boullion
  • cantaloupe: not -ope
  • cemetery: not -ary
  • corollary: one r, two l’s
  • correlate: two r’s, one l
  • dispensable: not -ible
  • guerrilla: two r’s, two l’s
  • minuscule: not miniscule!
  • mischievous: apparently mischievious is not a word!
  • occasion: not occaison (I still don’t get why I always misspell this one. I guess it is my occasional heel)
  • perseverance: not -ence
  • sacrilegious: i and e inverted from their placement in “religious”, likely because the word doesn’t actually derive from “religious”, but instead stealing-of (legere) sacred things (sacri-).
  • sergeant: not sa-

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I knew this already. I learned something new!