Of ungulates and pinnipeds

Plenty of 13-year-olds are capricious. Some of them are cantankerous. But how many of them know what those words mean?

Zoe Kenney does. "Capricious" and "cantankerous" were among the words that helped her win a statewide vocabulary competition in January, and on Saturday she'll head for Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia to represent Florida at the first Reader's Digest National Word Power Challenge.

How does she feel about testing her word savvy against 51 other kids? "A little nervous," she says, "but I'm really excited. It's going to be a lot of fun."

Zoe, who lives in Valrico, is an eighth-grader at Progress Village Middle School, a magnet school for the arts. Last fall, she won vocabulary contests at the classroom and school level. Then she took a written test to qualify for the state contest.

"I didn't hear anything for about two months, so I just thought I hadn't made it," Zoe says. "Then they called me and said it was in a couple of weeks."

So off she went to Jacksonville, where she competed against more than 50 other children in fourth through eighth grade. The vocabulary contests use a format similar to a spelling bee: The word is displayed in a sentence, then contestants are given multiple choice definitions.

Zoe outlasted her competitors, picking the right definitions for such words as "milliner" and "nullify."

Before the contest, she says, "I wasn't very confident. My dad kept telling me it was just a game, that I was there to have fun. And before I knew it, I won."

Some of the words she was given during the contest were unfamiliar, but she figured them out by using context and breaking the words down. "I used the prefixes and suffixes and stuff."

On a pop quiz over the phone, she uses the same technique. Asked for the meaning of "levity" and given the choices "seriousness," "lightheartedness," "complexity" and "oversimplification," she chooses lightheartedness, "because I knew it had to have something to do with lightness, like levitation."

"Noisome" (noxious or harmful) stumps her, though. "I just got home from school, and my brain's worn out."

Zoe probably comes by her interest in words naturally. Her father, Richard Kenney, is a professor of journalism and chairman of the communications department at Florida Southern College in Lakeland. Her mother, former St. Petersburg Times journalist Linda Chion-Kenney, is a reporter for the Brandon News.

Chion-Kenney says a reading resource teacher at Progress Village, Stacey O'Neal, "picked up the ball" to get the vocabulary contest rolling there.

Her parents coached her for the competitions, but, Chion-Kenney says, Zoe's way with words "reflects a lot of reading."

"I love to read," Zoe says, "mystery, fantasy, mostly fiction." C.S. Lewis is a favorite author.

She also has experience on stage. At Progress Village, she studies musical theater and dance. "I've been dancing for 10 years, ballet, tap, jazz."

That stage presence will come in handy next week at the National Word Power Challenge. Fifty-two kids will represent each of the states plus the District of Columbia and Department of Defense Dependents Schools.

The opening round Tuesday will whittle the field to 10 finalists, who will compete on Wednesday. Al Roker, the Today Show weatherman, will be the quiz master in the final round, and his production company will tape the contest for later broadcast on television.

The winner gets a $25,000 college scholarship, with scholarships of $15,000 and $10,000 going to those in second and third place.

Is Zoe already thinking about college as she winds up eighth grade? "A little bit," she says. "Everything I want to do is really expensive, so a scholarship would help."

She sounds more than a little bit specific about her plans, though: "I'm going to Blake," the magnet high school for performing arts, next year, then she wants to go to New York University for its musical theater program.

In the meantime, she's thrilled the contest is being held at Colonial Williamsburg. "I've always wanted to go there. I had been bugging my mom to take me this summer."

She'll probably pick up a few new words at the contest. "I like to use big words with my friends," she says. Do the words impress them? She laughs. "Yeah."

She has learned something else from the contests, too. "Even if you don't think you can do something, you have a really good chance if you believe in yourself."

-- Contact Colette Bancroft at bancroft@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8435.

How's your vocabulary?

Here are some sample vocabulary questions from the Web site of the Reader's Digest National Word Power Challenge, www.rd.com/nwpc/questions.jhtml. See answers below.

1. MIGRATORY is defined as what:

a) stalking

b) roving

c) grooming

d) feeding

2. A breeding place for animals and birds is called a:

a) warren

b) apothecary

c) rookery

d) aviary

3. Most CRUSTACEANS are located where?

a) on deciduous trees

b) in tall grass

c) in desert sand

d) in salt water

4. Kangaroos, opossums and wombats are what kind of animals?

a) ruminants

b) ungulates

c) pinnipeds

d) marsupials

5. Which of these words pertains to apes?

a) simian

b) ursine

c) cervine

d) apian

Answers: 1 b), 2 c), 3 d), 4 d), 5 a).

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.