2024, Kids, Media, Words

My Word!

53 Comments

I subscribe to my hometown paper The Rock County Star Herald, and was tickled to see the recent news that English students at the Luverne High School recently were named State Champions in the Minnesota Fall 2023 Vocabulary Bowl.

This competition was new to me. It is done on-line. Every two months, students are given access to 15,000 vocabulary words from various subjects, and study the words and take tests through definition, context, spelling, etc., also learning the words in specific pieces of literature they read in their English classes. After a certain number of correct answers, they are considered to have mastered the words. 100 Junior and Senior students at Luverne mastered 11,000 words from Oct. 1 through Nov. 30. They are on their way to another championship for Feb.1 through March 31.

I would have loved such a challenge. I was in every musical competition and speech tournament there was, but this would have been extremely fun! I would love to know if this expands their working vocabulary and if they use the words they are learning in their everyday conversations!

What extracurricular activities were you involved in during high school? What new or interesting words have you heard lately? Got any favorite words?

53 thoughts on “My Word!”

  1. i’ve been referring to all of my various vaccinations and boosters as “jabs” lately. I know it’s an English affectation, but it seems more appropriate to say “jab” than “shot”.

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  2. Oh yes, joined every club around it seemed. There was Pep Club, GRA (Girls Recreation Assn.), French Club, Ushers; in Y-teens I ended up being Pres. senior year. Of course, the one I really wanted, a dance team Bobettes, I didn’t get into.

    There has been an interesting new word lately, and I hope I remember it by the end of the day.

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  3. I joined nothing extracurricular in high school, participated in no competitions and engaged in no sports. I suppose you could say that the one year I was in the marching band was extracurricular but I was drawn into that by virtue of having been in band curricularly.

    There was a commentary I read somewhere recently, possibly in the New York Times, in which the columnist was complaining about writers who use vocabulary that “sends one to the dictionary”. He or she insinuated they were showing off and lording it over their readers.

    Curiously, the vocabulary example this columnist used was “adamantine”. Adamantine and adamantium refers to a mythological substance that cannot be broken. We see it referenced more commonly in the term “adamant”, where it conveys firmness. Adamantine is less often used but easily inferred and hardly obscure.

    One observation the columnist made was that Hemingway never sent his readers to the dictionary. What the columnist failed to disclose was that characterization was not meant as a compliment.

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    1. Every few years I would get a student in AP or college prep English who had a huge vocabulary who shot gunned it into papers then exploded in anger when I criticized them for it. For one thing they never got the nuances of the words right.
      They never really changed their behavior. I was told by other ex-students college teachers flunked them for it until they changed or did not and dropped out of college. The shame was they were bright and voracious readers, which is how you develop vocabulary.

      Clyde

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      1. It’s not always easy to guess which words will be taken as vocabulary excesses. How can one guess what words are unfamiliar to others? At what point are you “dumbing down” your writing by using more general, less specific words in place of richer, more precise ones?

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  5. In a book I was just reading, the author quoted a description referring to a person as a thaumaturgis.

    Considerately, the author provided a definition of that term: a miracle worker.

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  6. Track. 880 and 440 mostly. Yes, yards not meters.

    Words: Certiorari and Mens rea.

    In following the trials of 45, I’ve become better acquainted with legal Latin.

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  7. i have a dear friend

    Mara adamitz scrupe who decided 10 years ago to become a poet. She had been the arts as an artist and administrator of English and art departments

    when she got started she sent me her stuff to be a reader and I lived it but commented that her big words were going to scare people off but she couldn’t help herself. She has become a rock star in poetry circles and is publishing in books and poetry journals at a very high rate

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  8. HS Extracurriculars: jazz ensemble (I was a band/orchestra geek too, but that was during school hours); soccer; intramural basketball, occasionally in the pep band for hockey games. I tried out for the baseball team but didn’t make it.

    I’m liking “curmudgeon” more and more. Perhaps because I’m becoming one in my old age? 🙂

    Can’t recall any new, interesting words lately.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  9. extra over the years of school

    baseball basketball football wrestling chiortheater

    theater orchestra with my guitar, my rock band tool over and became my life at some point then on to focus on art and music as business guy motivational speaking and listening I am still a motivational junkie. Aren’t podcasts just the best?

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  11. I love words. I’m a logophile. Auto-correct changes logophile to ‘loophole.’ I’m not a loophole.

    I was in all the choirs from grade 7 through my senior year. I was also in Chamber Singers and Da Capo Singers. At St. Olaf I was in Manitou Singers. I was in marching band and concert band. I also enjoyed being in the school plays. I tried gymnastics for a while, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as music and I don’t think my parents wanted to drive me into town for practice. When I was younger, I was a Girl Scout. A few neighborhood girls had a club we called the Gallant Gals. We cleaned up trash. (OT: a saw a poor Girl Scout sitting near the curb of a busy street all by herself with her boxes of cookies piled around her on a plastic table. It was too busy to stop there. I felt bad for her. It was a terrible location and she was all alone. If she’s there later today, I will walk to her and buy a lot of cookies from her.)

    I don’t know if I have a favorite word. Lately it’s been ‘peace’ or ‘sanctuary.’ I like to think of ‘sanctuary’ as any sacred place, a place one feels safe and at peace. When I was up north recently and hiking in a pine forest, I was thinking “sanctuary of the pines.” I’m sure that has been used before. I also like the word ‘exquisite’.

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  13. I’m anonymized. WP ate my post.

    Logophile: one who loves words. Auto-correct changes it to loophole.

    Theater, choirs, bands, more choirs, a little bit of gymnastics, ballet, Girl Scouts.

    Exuberant, peace, sanctuary, many more.

    ~Krista

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  14. Football, theater, yearbook. Because I was a farm boy that was all I could do.

    My vocabulary I believe is shrinking. All this alone time does things and pain does things to. my brain.

    Clyde

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  16. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I was the total band geek in High School which was my primary activity. 4H was the other community based activity. We also had a fun Youth Group at our church that I enjoyed a lot. I belonged to many other clubs, such as German Club, but I wasn’t really into it.

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  17. I like my collection of old tool and mechanical terms like snath, hardy hole, pitman, and a few my brain won’t call up. Told you my vocabulary is shrinking.

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  18. For all intensive purposes, judging by what people right on social media, it’s damn near impossible to underestimate what they don’t know. I’m impaled.

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  19. Extracurricular activities during high school were rather sporadic, except for being a girl scout, which I was for the duration. I sang in the school choir for a while, and acted in our senior play.

    Most of my extracurricular activities were not sponsored by or in any way associated with my school. Don’t know if they count?

    I swam competitively the first two years, then switched to diving for the remainder and beyond. I took community ed classes in sewing during the winter months, so I could make my own clothes. Also during winter months, I always took dance lessons.

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  20. I love words, though I have trouble with some of them. I’m fascinated by words that don’t sound anything like what I’d expect them to from their spelling. Coxswain and boatswain, are two examples; slough is another one that comes to mind at the moment.

    I like the sound of the word frolicking, it’s sounds right for it’s meaning; so does befuddled. Many of my favorite words I learned from my old landlady back in Cheyenne; it probably dates me when I use words like nincompoop, discombobulated, and flabbergasted. Cattywampus is another one.

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  21. I was a theatre geek in high school so spent most of my extracurricular time working on various plays. Was also active in the AFS group and Dramatic Interp. I let the track coach talk me into hurdles my junior year but that ended fairly abruptly when my trail leg grazed the hurdle one day at practice, scraping way too much skin off my shin, from knee to ankle. The language teachers tried unsuccessfully to get some language groups going and they recruited me (I took Spanish, French and Russian in high school) but none of the groups got off the ground.

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  22. I like the word irenic. Perhaps if I acquire a female pet I can name her Irene.

    Some scientific words are intimidating, but there are many I like. Phloem and xylem. Chrysalis. Tundra. Fauna.

    Names of plants and birds…chickadee. Nuthatch. Heliopsis. Amaranthus. Lilac.

    And animals. Armadillo. Gnu. SQUIRREL!

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    2. Puteketeke, what a fun name. Manitowoc and lots of other place names are to. I lived a couple of years on Nawadaha Blvd. in Minneapolis, not even most locals had any idea where it was or how to pronounce it.

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