Word: variant
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...wonders. It led to Duco to rayon and to cellophane-the latter two based on French patents. The French thought they were sticking Du Pont with a useless novelty in cellophane (the stuff came apart when wet). But Du Pont's researchers discovered how to waterproof it (a variant of Duco did the trick), and built such a market that by 1939 cellophane was one of Du Pont's biggest-selling products. Then came nylon, which eclipsed even cellophane and today still leads all Du Pont sales...
...when 13-year-old Audrey Mathews of Washington was sent down in tears for spelling supersede with a "c." Four rounds later, red-faced judges called her back after finding that such a respectable authority as Webster's unabridged dictionary accepted Audrey's spelling as a correct variant. Nobody could remember when National Spelling Bee judges had ever had to reverse themselves in such fashion. And they were not through backtracking. Before the contest was over they had done it three times more, belatedly accepting knarled (for gnarled), coruscate with a double "r" and rarefy with...
...Advocate, in reducing its price to 25 cents, has economized on its proof-reading. There are no less than seven errors, including a delightful variant spelling: "sneakres...
Sometimes, for reasons which medicine does not yet understand, a cell turns out to be different from normal cells. Most such "mutations," less competent than the normal cells, die and are absorbed by the body. But occasionally a variant cell appears that is disastrously competent...
...Nazis were rather like cancer," says Rhoads, growing philosophical as all scientists are apt to do when they think about cancer. "Starting with a variant cell, Hitler, the Nazis multiplied throughout the German nation, bringing it to destruction. It took external forces to kill the Nazi cancer...