Here is an exercise in swallowing my pride.

38 years, 2 months and 24 days ago I had a panic attack about spelling. I have panic attacks regularly because I have suffered from panic disorder my entire life. It’s not like I have a special feelings diary where I document the date and circumstances, like “July 9, 1989: Jenny L. gave me a funny look while whispering to Jenny M. in the cafeteria and they both started laughing.”

I happen to know the exact date and trigger of this particular attack because there is a wire report from Linda Parker of the Kentucky Postdocumenting my moment of failure at the National Spelling Bee. I messed up the word “phyllophorous” in front of a crowd of reporters, fellow contestants, my family, their families, and random adult strangers who bought tickets to watch a bunch of stupid kids cry on stage under TV lights.

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I had a minor fit just last week when I tried to spell “bourguignon” without looking it up. As far as I know, no one was watching this time, but I felt the same hot shame spread across my face that I did all those decades ago. Back then, I was just an awkward eighth-grader with a terrible perm and untreated anxiety. Now I’m an adult and I get paid to write and edit for a major food publication. I think I’ve got the hair situation under control, and decades of therapy and the right medications have dulled my physical nervous reactions. However, there are certain food words that I have to look up no matter how many times I type them, and that bugs me—or at least it bugged me until recently.

Back in 1986, there was no spell checker at hand, unless you count the brick-thick Merriam-Webster dictionary on the shelf in my father’s study. Maybe that’s why I beat myself up for not immediately remembering whether it’s “buratta,” “burrata,” or “burratta” (that’s the middle word); “bouillon,” “boulion,” or “bouillion” (the first one); or “bouillabaisse” (yes, I’m not even going to try that). Because I should just knowledge that, shouldn’t I?

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Consequently, I’m also far too smug when I can type “fettuccine,” “appetizers,” and “focaccia” without Google Docs putting a squiggly red line underneath it saying “You messed that up.” Granted, there is one under the word “phyllophorous,” but that’s only because it’s shockingly not common enough to be in the Google Docs dictionary. I’m adding it to my personal dictionary right now, and in case you’re interested, the word means “producing leaves” or “bearing leaves.”

But I’ve been sharing all of this angst with my Food & Wine colleagues in an effort to find solidarity, and it seems I’m not the only one who worries about spelling or pronouncing some of these food terms correctly. “‘Hors d’ourves’ is one I always screw up, even here,” our editor-in-chief Hunter Lewis admitted in a Slack thread, before adding that he would constantly trip up over “muffaletta.” (In his defense, there are multiple spellings for the latter that are considered valid, and several colleagues responded to the former with an “same” emoji.) Deputy editorial director Chandra Ram quickly hoisted “prosciutto” onto the pile, while senior drinks editor Prairie Rose chokes on daiquiri, curaçao, caipirinha, sbagliato, and boulevardier.

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“I once had a spelling bee with my friends and nobody knew how to spell restaurateur,” said deputy editor Amelia Schwartz, after which two other editors noted that they wouldn’t take a pitch seriously if that mistake was made. I find myself pronouncing that particular word in a comical way in a “fancy” voice, partly to cover up the fact that I’m suffering from a mild case of linguistic contortions while trying to stick the landing, but damn, I’d spell-check before sending out an official communiqué in the hopes of getting hired.

Hunter also mentioned that he “may or may not have also practiced how to say sommelier about 2,000 times,” to which editor-in-chief Karen Shimizu noted that both the spelling and pronunciation of “capsaicin” were a source of irritation. Deputy editor Dylan Garret claimed he would be ashamed of embarrassing himself in a meeting by mispronouncing the names of various drinks he had only seen written down—if he were a person who felt shame, which he is not.

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This actually opened my eyes. Every time I type Dylan’s last name, I stop and check that it has the right number of r’s and t’s, because he’s my colleague and my friend and a remarkably precise editor, and it’s a matter of professional and personal respect that I get it right. And I realize that I was fretting over the correct spelling of ingredients, dishes and drinks – and spelling in general – because I’m more or less the same word nerd who made it all the way to Washington DC to stand shaking on a stage and prove how much I care about the precision of language.

This precision is inextricably linked to my love of food. I am not ashamed of it, but I am very meticulous. And when I have to look things up from time to time, I swallow this stupid pride. I have heard that it goes well with Bourguignon.

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