Bemuse means to bewilder. Unwitting means ignorant. Monomania means obsession. Bemuse, unwitting and monomania put together means 60 grains of rice.
Every time a word is correctly matched to its definition at FreeRice.com, 20 grains of rice are donated through the United Nations to help end world hunger.
So far, almost six billion grains of rice have been donated-enough to feed more than 50,000 people for one day, according to the website.
FreeRice.com started on Oct. 7, and is a simple online word game.
A new advertisement appears at the bottom of the screen with every correct answer, generating money which is then used to buy the rice that is donated to impoverished countries.
The more correct answers one gets, the more grains of rice that are donated. The words start off simply and become increasingly difficult with every correct answer. Wrong answers decrease the difficulty level of the game, but do not decrease the amount of rice donated, as every correct answer, no matter the difficulty, is worth 20 grains of rice.
FreeRice.com was started by computer programmer John Breen, who has also created thehungersite.com and Poverty.com.
Breen was inspired from his son’s SAT preparation, seeing the site as a way to both help people learn and help people live.
“I just find it disturbing that there are so many people dying of hunger and living in poverty, and it’s something that can fairly easily be solved,” Breen said to The Kansas City Star.
As for the rice, it is as real as the problem of global hunger.
According to the United Nations World Food Programme, more than 850 million people in the world are chronically hungry, meaning that their daily caloric intake is less than what it should be.
This rice goes to such people in nations such as Bangladesh, Myanmar and Nepal. In addition, the online word game has been used as everything from a distraction during business meetings to a competition between friends to a vocabulary-building exercise for fourth-grade students.
“It’s much bigger than I thought it would be in [two] month[s],” Breen said. “I’ve gotten lots of nice notes and encouragement from people, but ultimately they are the ones driving it. I hope it keeps growing.”
Fortuitous means lucky. Culmination means climax. Datum means fact. And now, fortuitous, culmination and datum mean 60 grains of rice, a little bit of procrastination and a small opportunity to affect the world.
