Ruralite Cafe: Published 05/31/01

By Lynn Hotaling Associate Editor

Take the 'Sesquicentennial Challenge'

Our esteemed County Commissioners' Chairman Jay Denton likes "Sasquatch." Others tend to discard syllables to create new words like "sesquennial," "sesquitennial" or maybe "sestennial." But like it or not, we're all going to have to learn it, because this year marks Jackson County's Sesquicentennial, which Webster's defines as "a 150th anniversary, or its celebration." Sesquicentennial is a combination of "sesqui" (one and a half, or half again) and centennial (you guessed it - a 100th anniversary, or its celebration). We can also, should we so desire, refer to the year (or the celebration as a sesquicentenary, which means, quite simply, sesquicentennial. To help ourselves become a little more familiar with this tongue-twister of a word, a few of us gathered in the Cafe and decided we'd see how many words we could make from sesquitennial's 16 letters. Would you believe 164?

When we found ourselves semi-stuck at 111, we decided to press on until we got 150 words for 150 years. Only by then we were on a roll, and continued through 14 more.

The longest word we made out of sesquicentennial was "quintessence," (the fifth and highest element in ancient and medieval philosophy that permeates all nature and is the substance composing the celestial bodies, or, the essence of a thing in its purest and most concentrated form), which has 12 letters.

We found that not having an "R" or an extra "T" really inhibited things. We could have made some great words like "trice" if we'd only had an R. We could have made some historically significant words, too, like "era" and "trail."

We did find a few of those words that relate to the past. Using the letters in sesquicentennial, we spelled "ancient," "Latin," "quest," "quaint" and "quilt."

We determined that there a lot of out-of-the-ordinary words lurking within sesquicentennial. Words like "linnet" (a common, small Old World finch), "lisle" (a smooth, slightly twisted thread usually made of long-staple cotton), and "stile" (a step or set of steps for passing over a fence or wall).

Sesquicentennial contains several sets of homonyms: cent, sent and scent; site and cite; sail and sale; ale and ail; ten and tin; and queen and quean (a disreputable woman).

The big word has a whole set of sewing words - linen, lace, satin, tat, quilt, lisle and suit. If we had that R (plus an H and a D), we could even make thread.

Sesquicentennial doesn't have rhythm, and its letters don't make music. But Jackson County is going to have a 150th birthday bash this fall that will culminate downtown on Saturday, Oct. 20. It should be fun. And we can all spell that.

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