The annual spelling bee for students was just concluded and it’s worth looking at the video of the young boy who won. Dev Shah.
In the Times article, they had a list of words which knocked out the competition. But one of them, I’m pasting it here and it might include the links, had a definition that was one of those that you have to look up the other words in order to understand it.
crenel: one of the embrasures alternating with merlons in a battlement.
I don’t know what Crenel means, and I don’t know what embrasures or merlons mean, and I only have a slight sense of what a battlement is.
So embrasure is usually a slit in the wall of a castle that is wider on the inside than on the outside to shoot arrows through. It is also the gap on the parapets on top of the castle that allow canons to shoot canon balls, or just a bunch of men with bows and arrows.
Merlons are the solid portion of that defensive wall, or battlement.
A battlement is a parapet meant for defense against an enemy, but can also be for decoration.
So now we know what a crenel is.
The word he spelled correctly was psammophile. An organism that thrives in sandy soils, like a cactus. He, an 8th grader, knew that psamm or psam was Greek for sand and phile was Greek for lover. Very impressive.