I have taught for 20+ years and never heard of these. Are they like Achievement Tests here in the Midwest, normally taken around here in the spring?
I also remember that a lepton is a Greek coin. I played the word “alate” in a Words with Friends game the other day and it made me so happy.
Limegreen, CTBS stands for “Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills.” I took it annually in the Midwest in elementary school in the 80s. Basic standardized, fill in the bubble tests.
CalMeachem, these words are from the memory skills section. They would read a list of very uncommon words with a brief definition. An hour or so later, you would be given a multiple choice test, where you had to match up the definition with the word. However, before you got the list of real test words, there were usually five sample words where they gave you the word and definition, plus some sample questions where you could see how they would be used later. Alate, baloon, wuzzle, yonker, lepton, sculch were sample words every year.
Apparently, there are a lot of people with, “A baloo is a bear,” burned into their brains. T-shirt.
I was thoroughly amused by the name of Wuzzles in the mid-80s, if not the actual show.
Younker is, by the way, a corruption of the dutch. Something like ‘Jounk Heer’, meaning young sir. (check wiki)
Yep. Reason I know this? I live near Yonkers. Which is named after a Jonkheer.
Brilliant gentleman, who I consider the first true New Yorker.
(though, truth be told, could also have been corrupted from the German, because my mind is now saying it’s more of a Minnesotan word.)
Sculch is also an archaic New England word. Not quite sure where it comes from, but I remember my grandfather using it.
Was this the same test where a korf was a tiger?
“A baloo is a bear.
A yonker is a young man.
To wuzzle is to mix.
A nene is a goose.”
–Product of Indiana public schools in the 80s and 90s, exposed to the CAT test.
I did these tests, and I have no idea what you guys are talking about.
I was going to respond with “simba is a lion”, but the thread was totally talking about something else.
head/smack.
Because I have a thing for bears, and because the Boston Bruins are on NHL Playoffs tonight, all day I’ve had in my head, “A Bruin is a bear… To wuzzle means to mix…” It was completely driving me bat-shizz crazy, to remember how that phrase got into my head, until Google led me straight to Straight Dope. Awesomeness. Now that I can finally remember these horrific memories, I can surely blame those Clockwork-Orange’ish tests which they inflicted upon us in the late 80’s for totally driving me to illicit substances which I may or may not have ingested during the early 90’s. Bears… It always comes back to bears, doesn’t it? (jk) I’m just so glad that my baloo/Bruin question finally got solved-- muchas gracias to you, Straight Dopers 
Peace!
Sounds like I should be glad I live in the wrong country for this.
Glad I lived in the wrong decade! I don’t remember this on the standardized tests we took, and certainly no questions repeated from year to year that stood out.
Double zombie.
A wahoo is a shrub.
A nehru is a jacket.
I took these tests when I was a kid in Saskatoon; I thought CTBS stood for “Canadian Test of B.S.” I don’t remember anything specific about them, though.
So the movie should be “Bear Ballou”?
FYI, I taught Middle School (6-8) in central FL (Seminole, FL) during the late 80s and early 90s before the CTBS (Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills) was scrapped for FCAT testing. The CTBS (a one day test) had no demands of test security as we gave the same test EVERY year. The booklets were kept in my cabinet, but not under lock and key. Teachers had to state several seemingly nonsense statements at the start of one section of the CTBS. We were to state them with no inflection or explanation. Then later in the section, students were to find and fill in the blanks from memory. Some of the statements were quite easy for students to remember:
A baloo is a bear.
A younker is a young man.
A teapoy is a stool.
Sculch is junk.
Unfortunately we now have around 35 days of standardized testing and no fun quotes to remember:smack:
And it rises from the grave again.
Baloo, for what it’s worth, is Hindi for “bear”.
The statements ARE the definitions of the words from other languages.
Why did everybody hate taking tests? I loved taking them. I did badly on them, because I never bothered to learn how to study for them, and I was a C student, but I loved taking tests.
So, in Jungle Book, Baloo’s name was really just Bear?