I Dare You to Use That In a Sentence

Last week was the National Spelling Bee, an event frequently appreciated by "word nerds" like myself.  To be honest, I only made my school finals once, and I got eliminated quite early for spelling "break" instead of "brake," or the other way round; it was over thirty years ago.  Anyway, I was going to go on a tirade about how the Bee was running out of words and now had to pick the most obscure ones that have barley been used ever in English, when they through me a curve ball.  The words in the Championship Rounds were actually somewhat common.  In fact, not only did I recognize some of them, but I also knew how to spell one of them (pykrete, it was the subject of a Mythbusters segment).  I was even able to find the winning word, 'marocain' in dictionaries at my store.  Okay, it was the crossword puzzle dictionary and the Scrabble player's dictionary, but it still counts.  I even found it in the French dictionary, but with totally different meanings.  Translated from French, marocain can be a noun meaning "someone from Morocco" or an adjective meaning "of or pertaining to Morocco."  It didn't say if it could also mean the fabric used in by the announcer at the Bee.  It is actually a fairly common word, probably known to thousands of people connected to the fashion industry, compared to the much smaller numbers of some other recent winning words.  It got me wondering though, why do spellers always ask for the part of speech, when it is usually quite obvious by the definition what part of speech it is.  They cannot actually be thinking "I wonder if one can use a bird's name as a verb?".  I mean, at their ages, I knew that a noun was "a person, place or thing" thanks to Schoolhouse Rock.  They must use it as a delaying tactic, or they are not being taught basic grammar along with spelling.  However, my favorite part of the Bee is when the announcer gives examples of the word in a sentence.  The examples are almost always witty and usually have a touch of snide sarcasm.  My favorite one from this year was for ehretia. The sentence compared this ancient Roman term for a female attendant with a young girl's wish to someday become a part of Taylor Swift's posse.  It was a near perfect example for the word in a modern context, while still providing a bit of levity to the situation.  In fact, writing these example would be a dream job of mine.  Sure, you would only have to work two or three days a year, but you probably wouldn't get paid much either.  Still, it would be a good fit for me.  (Note:  The words in blue are definitely spelled correctly.  I made sure of it by checking my notes from the Bee before starting today's post.  Spellcheck did not catch them, thereby proving that the Bee might be getting a little too deep into the English language in finding words.)