"Hey, Dr. Bailly, give me a nice easy word, please," asked Liz Jergensen, speller 217, and an Idaho seventh grader.
"They seem easy to most of you," Dr. Bailly replied.
He gave her "scrofulous," having a diseased appearance.
"Oh, that one's meeeean," Liz said. She misspelled it.
Speller 220, Wolfgang Schaff, interrupted Dr. Bailly as he tried to define his word, "mangrove." He just spit it out.
It's a tropical maritime tree or shrub bearing fruit that germinates while still on the tree and having numerous prop roots that ultimately form an impenetrable mass and play an important role in land building.