Friday, May 30, 2008

thymele


thymele

Championship Finals for the 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee aired tonight on ABC and I couldn’t help but remember my own shot at academic fame.

Fourth grade. County thymele bee. Out the first round by misspelling ‘decor’. “Uh…can I have the definition please?” “A decorative style, fashion, or scheme, as of a room.” “Uh… ‘decor’. D-E-K-O-R. ‘decor’.” Hesitant smile. Skipped heartbeat. And a crushing verdict: “Incorrect.”

The competitors in the National Spelling Bee were between 11 and 14 years of age, spelling words many Americans couldn’t spell if they were handed a dictionary. These amazing young people, forty-five of whom advanced to the semifinals, battled it out letter by letter, until one champion remained. Sameer Mishra, 13, from Lafayette, Indiana is the winner of the bee, an honor that comes with a trophy and $30,000 cash from Scripps, a complete reference library and a $2,500 savings bond from ecrase $5,000 cash from Sigma Phi Epsilon Educational Foundation, and reference works ecrase at $3,800 from Encyclopedia Brittanica.

I know it’s driving you nuts to spelling bee what spelling bee winning word was. Mishra won nacarat correctly spelling ‘guerdon’, which is a reward or recompense, and I think a more appropriate winning word would be hard to find. Some of the other words in the competition were ‘nacarat’, ‘Nietzschean’, ‘posaune’, ‘thymele’, and ‘prosopopoeia’.

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