91 Fun Facts About Spelling

Which flower, whose name is Latin for 'little sword', did Frank Neuhauser spell to win the first National Spelling Bee in 1925?

Gladiolus: the plant was named for its sword-shaped leaves, from Latin gladius, 'sword', the same root that gives us 'gladiator'.

If the national spelling bee's finals run out of air time, what settles them?

Speed round: in the spell-off, each remaining speller gets a set time to spell as many words as possible, after the bee dropped its written tiebreaker test.

Zaila Avant-garde, who won the 2021 national spelling bee, also holds Guinness records in which sport?

Basketball: she has called spelling 'a side thing' and 'a little hors d'oeuvre', with basketball 'the main dish'.

The nonsense word 'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious' is used to mean what?

Wonderful: the writers of a 1949 song with a similar word sued Disney's music publisher for copyright infringement, and lost.

Under Scripps rules, a speller must be under 15 and must not have gone beyond which year of school?

Eighth grade: since 2013 the bee has also asked vocabulary questions, partly so it wouldn't be seen as a test of memorization alone.

Which 2006 Keke Palmer film is about a South Los Angeles girl in the National Spelling Bee?

Akeelah and the Bee: writer-director Doug Atchison got the idea watching the 1994 bee on TV and noticing that most spellers came from well-off backgrounds.

In the New York Times Spelling Bee game, which letter must every word you make include?

The center letter: after 2,499 puzzles without one, editors finally put an S on the board for the 2,500th, in March 2025.

Which organization held what it called the first countrywide US spelling bee, in Cleveland in 1908?

The National Education Association: the winner, Marie Bolden, was a Black girl from Cleveland, and her victory caused a scandal in New Orleans.

The made-up word 'ghoti' is meant to be pronounced like which English word?

Fish: 'gh' as in tough, 'o' as in women and 'ti' as in nation, a joke long used to show how unreliable English spelling is.

The spelling joke 'ghoti' is often credited to which writer, though it isn't in his writings?

George Bernard Shaw backed spelling reform, but the earliest known 'ghoti' is in an 1855 letter from the publisher Charles Ollier, a year before Shaw was born.

English spellings still mostly show how words sounded before which change, underway from the 1400s?

The Great Vowel Shift: from about the 15th to the 18th century the long vowels moved, so the 'a' in 'name' changed sound while its spelling stayed put.

Noah Webster popularised American spellings such as color and center by doing what?

Critics point out he did not originate them; his 1828 dictionary listed 70,000 words, 12,000 never before in a dictionary.

At a 1992 school spelling bee, Vice President Dan Quayle wrongly 'corrected' a student's spelling of which word?

Potato: trusting a cue card that said 'potatoe', Quayle had 12-year-old William Figueroa add an 'e' to his correct spelling.

Which of these words obeys the 'i before e except after c' rule?

Receive follows the rule, yet a 2009 British government spelling guide said 'i before e except after c' is not worth teaching.

Which is the correct spelling of the word meaning 'without doubt'?

Definitely: it comes from Latin definitus, 'defined', which is why the word ends in -ite, like 'definite' and 'finite', not -ate.

Which is the correct spelling of the word meaning 'to provide lodging'?

Accommodate: its double c and double m come from Latin accommodare, 'to make fit', built from ad- plus commodus, 'suitable'.

Which is the correct spelling of the word meaning 'to keep apart'?

Separate: from Latin separare, se- 'apart' plus parare 'prepare', which is why the middle is -par-; there's also 'a rat' in it.

Which is the correct spelling of the word meaning 'very small'?

Minuscule: from Latin minusculus, 'rather small', a diminutive of minus, 'less', which is why it starts minu-, not mini-.

Which is the correct spelling of the word meaning 'to replace'?

Supersede: it comes from Latin supersedere, 'to sit above', so it keeps the -sede of 'sedentary' rather than the -cede of 'precede'.

Which is the correct spelling of the word meaning 'an instance of something happening'?

Occurrence: its double c and double r come from Latin occurrere, ob- 'toward' plus currere 'to run', the root of 'current'.

Which is the correct spelling of the thousand-year period?

Millennium: two l's from Latin mille, 'thousand', and two n's from annus, 'year', the root of 'annual'.

Which is the correct spelling of the word for a go-between?

Liaison: it came from French, from Latin ligare, 'to bind', so a liaison is literally a tie between two people or groups.

Which is the correct spelling of the word meaning 'to make someone feel awkward'?

Embarrass: two r's and two s's; it came from French embarrasser, 'to block', from an Italian word for barring someone's way.

The silent 'd' in 'Wednesday' comes from the name of which god?

Odin: Old English wodnesdæg meant 'Woden's day', and Woden was the English form of the god the Norse called Odin.

In 1906, which US president ordered government printers to use simplified spellings such as 'thru'?

Theodore Roosevelt: after the press mocked it and the House voted for standard spelling in government documents, he let the old style return.

The Welsh village Llanfairpwllgwyngyll is said to have lengthened its name for what purpose?

To attract visitors: the full name now appears on a sign at the village's railway station, one of the sights tourists come to see.

What does the long word 'floccinaucinihilipilification' mean?

Judging something worthless: it strings together four Latin words, flocci, nauci, nihili and pili, that all mean 'of little or no value'.

The silent 's' in 'island' was added by wrongly linking it to which unrelated word?

Isle: the native Old English word was iegland, but from the 1500s writers borrowed the s of the French-derived 'isle', though the two words are unrelated.

Saying 'blushing crow' for 'crushing blow' is named after which Oxford clergyman?

William Spooner, warden of New College, Oxford, from 1903 to 1924, was reputed to muddle the sounds of his words in just this way.

The full chemical name of the protein titin runs to roughly how many letters?

189,800: the name strings together titin's amino acids, and dictionary makers treat such chemical names as verbal formulas, not English words.

Which is the correct spelling of the word meaning 'required'?

Necessary: from Latin necesse, 'unavoidable'; remember one c and two s's, like a shirt with one collar and two sleeves.

Which is the correct spelling of the word meaning strange or uncanny?

One of the best-known exceptions to 'i before e'; it originally meant fate, as in Shakespeare's weird sisters.

The long word 'antidisestablishmentarianism' named opposition to cutting which institution's official ties to the state?

The Church of England: the cause lost in mostly Catholic Ireland, where the Anglican Church of Ireland was disestablished in 1871.

Before 2020, what last forced the national spelling bee's cancellation?

World War II: in 2020 organizers first postponed the bee without a new date, then canceled it because of the pandemic.

In old-style shop names like 'Ye Olde Tea Shoppe', which word does 'ye' stand for?

The: early printers' type, imported from the Continent, had no letter thorn for the 'th' sound, so they set a y, never meant to be said 'yee'.

The 2021 national finals were held at an ESPN sports complex in which state?

The pandemic pushed the contest out of its usual Maryland resort for a year. Since 2026 it has been held at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington.

Jacques Bailly, the Scripps bee's official pronouncer since 2003, is also a former what?

Champion: ten years after winning in 1980, he wrote to the bee offering his help, and it hired him as an associate pronouncer.

What do you call a word like 'kayak' or 'level' that reads the same backwards as forwards?

A palindrome: from Greek palin, 'back again', and dromos, 'a running', so the word literally runs back on itself.

What shows national spelling bee finalists how much time they have left to spell a word?

A traffic light: it starts green, turns yellow as a countdown appears, and at red the speller must start spelling and ask no more questions.

Which English king began using English instead of Latin or French for official letters in 1417?

At the time Latin had one spelling for 'right', Old French six, and Middle English 77. Standardisation took roughly 500 more years.

Early printers added the silent 'h' to 'ghost' under the influence of which language?

Flemish: printers trained in the Low Countries brought the gh spelling, and in Middle English the word had usually been written 'gost'.

Which spelling is correct for the army rank pronounced 'kernel', reshaped in the 1580s to match Italian?

Colonel took its l from Italian 'colonnella' in the 1580s, but speakers kept the sound of the older form 'coronel'. The r survives in speech with no r left on the page.

In the film A Boy Named Charlie Brown, which word does Charlie Brown misspell to lose the national spelling bee?

Beagle is the word that beats him: he swaps its last two letters, even though his own dog Snoopy is one. Charlie Brown goes home as the national runner-up.

Which spelling is correct for the month named after a mid-month Roman festival of purification?

February comes from 'februa', the Roman purification rites held in the middle of the month. Medieval English first called it Feverer, before a 14th-century respelling.

Which spelling is correct for the ancient Egyptian royal title that comes from words meaning 'great house'?

Pharaoh ends in -aoh, a pattern so slippery that the 2015 Triple Crown racehorse American Pharoah was registered with two letters swapped. The mistake in his name is permanent.

Which spelling is correct for the soft sweet first made from the root of a plant of salt marshes?

Marshmallow is marsh plus mallow, the plant whose gummy root paste was the original recipe. The sweet has carried the plant's name since 1877.

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, coined by a puzzle fan in 1935, names a disease of which organ?

The lungs are where it strikes: the 45-letter word means an illness caused by inhaling very fine ash and sand dust. The head of the National Puzzlers' League made it up, and dictionaries later let it in.

Which spelling is correct for the polar region whose name comes from the Greek word for 'bear'?

Arctic means 'of the Bear', after the constellation that circles the northern sky. Medieval English wrote 'artik' with no first c, and the letter was only put back from the 1550s.

Which spelling is correct for a pre-school class, a word coined in 1840 by the educator Friedrich Fröbel?

Kindergarten is German for 'children-garden' and keeps the German t rather than the English d. Fröbel chose the name as a metaphor: young minds tended the way a gardener tends plants.

Which spelling is correct for the inner sense of right and wrong, a word built on the Latin verb 'to know'?

Conscience contains the whole word 'science', and that is no accident: both come from Latin 'scire', to know. The Latin original meant knowledge held within oneself.

Which of these four words wrongly keeps a letter 'e' that standard modern spelling drops?

Truely is the slip: true plus -ly gives truly, with the e dropped. 'Truely' was once an accepted form, and dictionaries now mark it archaic.

Which spelling is correct for a regular musical beat, a word lacking a, e, i, o and u?

Rhythm goes back to Greek 'rhythmos', a measured flow, from a verb meaning 'to flow'. Medieval English wrote the word as 'rime' until a 16th-century respelling on the classical model.

Which spelling is correct for a burial ground, a word that comes from the Greek for 'sleeping place'?

Cemetery comes from Greek 'koimeterion', a dormitory, which early Christian writers were the first to use for a graveyard. The word has three e's and no a.

Which spelling is correct for a place to eat out, a word formed from a verb meaning 'to restore'?

Restaurant began as a word for 'food that restores', and its keeper is a restaurateur, with no n. The Oxford English Dictionary calls 'restauranteur' an erroneous form.

Which spelling is correct for the word meaning thankful, built on an obsolete adjective that meant 'pleasing'?

Grateful grew from an obsolete adjective 'grate', meaning agreeable, from Latin 'gratus'. It is a rare case of English adding -ful to an adjective instead of a noun.

Which spelling is correct for a chart of days and months, named after the first day of the Roman month?

Calendar comes from Latin 'kalendae', the day each month when Roman debts fell due. A 'calender', with an e, is a real but different thing: a machine that presses paper or cloth.

Which spelling is correct for a pocket cloth, a compound whose second half once meant a head covering?

Handkerchief is hand plus kerchief, and kerchief itself literally means 'cover head'. The result is an odd meeting of a word for the hand with a word for the head.

Which metal, named by the chemist Humphry Davy, gains an extra 'i' and an extra syllable in British spelling?

Aluminum is the one: Davy first proposed 'alumium', then settled on 'aluminum' in 1812, and a reviewer swapped in 'aluminium' for its more classical sound. Britain kept the longer form.

Whose 1755 Dictionary of the English Language, compiled almost single-handedly in London, kept spellings like 'publick'?

Samuel Johnson had only clerks to help, copying out the quotations he had marked in books. His dictionary was seen as the pre-eminent one in English for 173 years, until the Oxford English Dictionary was complete.

Which of these four words borrowed from Italian is spelled wrongly, having lost one of its double letters?

Cappucino is the slip: cappuccino needs a double p and a double c. The drink is named after the Capuchin friars, whose brown hoods its colour was said to resemble.

Which spelling is correct for the long-bodied dog breed whose German name means 'badger dog'?

Dachshund joins German Dachs, badger, and Hund, dog. The breed's long, thin body was probably meant for burrowing into setts and drawing the animal out.

Which spelling is correct for a special right or advantage, a word from the Latin for 'a law for one person'?

Privilege joins Latin 'privus', individual, and 'lex', law: a ruling made for or against a single person. There is no d in it, whatever 'ledge' and 'knowledge' suggest.

Which is the standard spelling of the adjective for playfully naughty, a three-syllable word many say with four?

Mischievous is simply mischief plus -ous, so there is no i after the v. The four-syllable '-ious' version has turned up in speech and print since the 16th century but is still widely treated as nonstandard.

Which spelling is correct for the way a word is said aloud, a noun related to the verb 'pronounce'?

Pronunciation has no 'noun' in it, unlike the verb pronounce. Both go back to Latin 'nuntiare', to announce, from 'nuntius', a messenger.

Which spelling is correct for the temperature scale on which water freezes at 32 degrees?

Fahrenheit is the surname of Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, the Danzig-born physicist who devised the scale. In one German telling, its zero was the coldest air he measured at home in the winter of 1708–09.

Which is the correct spelling of the sea between the West Indies and South America, named after an indigenous people?

Caribbean comes from Carib, the name an indigenous people used for themselves, so it starts with a single r. Their name is said to mean 'brave ones' or 'strong men'.

Which is the correct spelling of the sea whose Latin name means 'in the middle of the land'?

Mediterranean is built on 'medius', middle, and 'terra', land, which is why it has one t and a double r. The Anglo-Saxons called it the Wendel-sea, after the Vandals who settled on its shores.

Which spelling is correct for the military rank whose name literally means 'place holder'?

Lieutenant is 'lieu', place, plus 'tenant', holding: a deputy who stands in for a higher authority. Britons say it with a 'lef-' sound, and where that came from is a mystery.

Which spelling is correct for a writer of stage plays, a word ending in an old term for a maker?

Playwright ends in 'wright', an old word for a maker that survives in wheelwright and in surnames such as Cartwright. Ben Jonson used the term in the 1610s as a mocking name.

Which of these four everyday words is spelled wrongly here because a letter that should be doubled appears only once?

Recomend is the slip: the word is re- plus commend, so the double m of commend has to stay. There is only one c because the prefix is re-, not rec-.

Which dramatist left six surviving signatures, all on legal papers, none spelling his surname as it is printed today?

William Shakespeare signed himself Shakp, Shaksper, Shakspe, Shakspere and Shakspeare, often using the abbreviations of his day. Three of the six signatures are on his will.

Which spelling is correct for a trendsetter or early indicator, a word that first meant the lead sheep of a flock?

Bellwether has nothing to do with weather: a wether is a male sheep, especially a castrated ram, and the leader of the flock had a bell hung on its neck.

Which spelling is correct for the spotted dog breed thought to be named after a historical region of Croatia?

Dalmatian comes from Dalmatia, so it ends -ian, like Croatian. The dogs were popular in the early 1800s as carriage dogs, trotting beside the vehicle and guarding it while the owner was away.

Which spelling is correct for general agreement, a word built on the Latin verb meaning 'to feel together'?

Consensus comes from Latin 'consentire', to feel together, which makes it a relative of consent and sense. It came into regular English use in the 1850s as a term in physiology, before it meant agreement among people.

Which spelling is correct for dogged persistence, the name NASA gave the rover it landed on Mars in 2021?

Perseverance has no r before the v: its root is Latin 'severus', strict or serious, as in severe. NASA took the rover's name from a school student's winning entry in a naming contest.

Which of these four words has the wrong ending, where '-ant' and '-ent' are easily confused?

Independant is the slip: independent ends in -ent. British English does accept 'dependant', but only as the noun for a person who relies on someone else.

Which of these words usually keeps its 'u' in American spelling, having entered English from Scots?

Glamour began as a Scottish word for a magic spell, said to be an altered form of 'grammar' in its old sense of occult learning. Sir Walter Scott's writings made it popular in English.

Which Latin word meaning 'thus' do editors place in brackets after a spelling error they are quoting faithfully?

Sic tells the reader that an error was in the original and is not the editor's own. It is a whole Latin word: the claims that it stands for 'spelled in context' or 'spelling is correct' are later inventions.

Which Oscar-nominated 2002 documentary follows young contestants through the 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee?

Spellbound tracks its spellers before, during and after the contest, and one of them, Nupur Lala, goes on to win it. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Before it spread to spelling contests, the American word 'bee' named which kind of gathering?

A shared work party was a 'bee' by 1769: neighbours pooled their labour to raise a building, roll logs or pare apples for one of their number. The name was later stretched to contests.

Which county's 25th annual spelling bee gives a 2005 Broadway musical comedy its title and its setting?

Putnam County is where six young spellers compete, joined on stage by four real audience members. The Broadway production was nominated for six Tony Awards and won two.

Which spelling is correct for the purplish-red colour and shrub named after a 16th-century German botanist?

Fuchsia honours Leonhard Fuchs, so the letters run f-u-c-h-s before the -ia. His surname is simply the German word for 'fox'.

Which spelling is correct for 'disrespectful of holy things', formed from a Latin word for temple robbery?

Sacrilegious comes from sacrilege, Latin for stealing sacred objects, built on 'legere', to take. Its ending is not from the word 'religion', which is why the i and the e sit the other way round.

Which spelling is correct for 'to vaccinate', a verb that began in gardening as grafting a bud into a plant?

Inoculate joins a single-n 'in-' to Latin 'oculus', which meant an eye and also a bud. The medical sense arrived later, first of all for protection against smallpox.

Which spelling is correct for 'to dry out thoroughly', the verb behind the grated, dehydrated coconut used in baking?

Desiccate has one s and a double c because it is Latin 'de-', thoroughly, plus 'siccare', to dry. English has used the verb since the 1570s.

Which is the standard spelling for a personal quirk, a word from the Greek for one's own 'mixture' of traits?

Idiosyncrasy ends in -crasy because it comes from Greek 'krasis', a mixture, not from the '-cracy' of democracy. It began in English as a medical term for a person's physical constitution.

Which spelling is correct for assorted equipment, a word that in law once meant a wife's property beyond her dowry?

Paraphernalia comes from Greek 'para', beside, and 'pherne', dowry, which is where its easily dropped second r belongs. The looser sense of odds and ends of equipment dates from 1736.

Which industrialist bankrolled the Simplified Spelling Board, announced in New York in 1906 to tidy up English?

Andrew Carnegie pledged $15,000 a year, convinced that simpler spelling could help make English a global language and a force for peace. He later criticised the approach of the board he had paid for.

The expression OK won national fame in 1840 when voters tied it to 'Old Kinderhook', the nickname of which president?

Martin Van Buren came from Kinderhook, New York, and his backers used the two letters in his re-election campaign. Most reference works trace OK itself to an 1830s Boston fad for jokey misspellings such as 'oll korrect'.

Which country was home to Jody-Anne Maxwell, in 1998 the first non-American to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee?

Jamaica gave the 12-year-old from Kingston a celebrity's welcome when she came home. She had qualified by winning the island's own national contest, which her sister had won in 1990.

The ghost word 'dord', printed in a 1934 Webster's dictionary after a slip was misread, was defined as meaning what?

Density was the meaning given: a slip reading 'D or d' was meant to list it among the things the letter D can abbreviate, and was read as one word. An editor caught the error in 1939 because the entry had no etymology.