word: pharaoh

pharaoh:  a title used in many modern discussions of the ancient Egyptian rulers of all periods. The title originates in the term "pr-aa" which means "great house" and describes the royal palace. The title of Pharaoh started being used for the king during the New Kingdom, specifically during the middle of the eighteenth dynasty. (from Wikipedia)

Last Saturday was the annual Atlanta Open Orthographic Meet (aka spelling bee), held at Manuel's Tavern every year on the first Saturday after Valentine's Day.  This year's first round was a bit easier -- you could make a couple mistakes and still advance, but I made my annual stupid mistake with "pharaoh".

Here's a sampling of this year's words:

Round 1: bulwark, apropos, apiary

Round 2: uxorious, involucre, coccygodynia

Round 3: smaragd, mirliton, zugzwang

Round 4: rijsttafel, mbaquanga, tchick

I've written about this annual event before -- click to see the 2010, 2009, 2008 and 2007 writeups.

 

Comments

[Chris C.]

Oh look, zugzwang is word of the day!

http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/archive/2011/07/19.html