- NOTE — Whenever I discuss a spelling bee word somewhere on this website, you'll see the word is highlighted as a link. Just click the link to open a new page at the place where I talk about the word in more detail.
Scripps National Spelling Bee Words
Where Do They Come From?
Every word announced to the trembling spellers on stage in Washington for the National Spelling Bee is taken from Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged, usually just abbreviated as Webster's Third
.
- NOTE — To be a tad pernickety, which you kind of have to be at this level, the official word source also includes the addenda section of this dictionary.
Every year, this dictionary is scoured by a word list team managed by Carolyn Andrews. Words extracted from the impossibly large tome are assembled into lists by degree of difficulty, with each list being assigned to a particular round of the Bee.
All words are fair game, including proper nouns (sorry Scrabble players!). The ruling about variant spellings is a bit subtle, but important enough, I think, to warrant quoting in full...
Scripps National Spelling Bee Words
The Championship List
Every spelling bee has to end, and to make sure it happens, a very special collection of words is assembled for the last few rounds of the Bee. The collection is appropriately called The Championship List.
Want to get a feel for what the words in the final rounds of the National Spelling Bee are like? Let's take a look at the sequence of words that ended the 2009 Nationals. We take up the bee when there are just four contestants remaining...
- Kyle Mou
- Aishwarya Pastapur
- Tim Ruiter
- Kavya Shivashankar
As they fight out the final rounds, the judges are forced to bring out the big guns — The Championship Word List. As if the earlier words haven't been difficult enough!
Note the caliber of words required to dismiss these amazing spellers one by one, until just one speller remains, to be crowned 2009 National Spelling Bee Champ. A name colored in red means that the speller was dismissed at that point in the Bee after misspelling the word appearing before that name.
- SCHIZAFFIN — Kyle Mou
- WISENT — Aishwarya Pastapur
- DIACOELE — Kavya Shivashankar
- REREDOS — Tim Ruiter
- ANTONOMASIA — Aishwarya Pastapur
- BOUQUINISTE — Kavya Shivashankar
- ORIFLAMME — Tim Ruiter
- GUAYABERA — Aishwarya Pastapur
- ISAGOGE — Kavya Shivashankar
- SOPHROSYNE — Tim Ruiter
- MENHIR — Aishwarya Pastapur
- PHORESY — Kavya Shivashankar
- MAECENAS — Tim Ruiter
- LAODICEAN — Kavya Shivashankar
Scripps National Spelling Bee Words
Final Words
Below is a list of the last correctly spelled word at each Bee between 1990 and 2009, inclusive. Beside each winning word I've listed the name/s of the speller/s who won the championship by correctly spelling that word...
- 1990 FIBRANNE — Amy Marie Dimak
- 1991 ANTIPYRETIC — Joanne Lagatta
- 1992 LYCEUM — Goad Amanda Goad
- 1993 KAMIKAZE — Geoff Hooper
- 1994 ANTEDILUVIAN — Ned G. Andrews
- 1995 XANTHOSIS — Justin Tyler Carroll
- 1996 VIVISEPULTURE — Wendy Guey
- 1997 EUONYM — Rebecca Sealfon
- 1998 CHIAROSCURIST — Jody-Anne Maxwell
- 1999 LOGORRHEA — Nupur Lala
- 2000 DEMARCHEGeorge Thampy
- 2001 SUCCEDANEUM — Sean Conley
- 2002 PROSPICIENCE — Pratyush Buddiga
- 2003 POCOCURANTE — Sai R. Gunturi
- 2004 AUTOCHTHONOUS — David Tidmarsh
- 2005 APPOGGIATURA — Anurag Kashyap
- 2006 URSPRACHE — Katharine Close
- 2007 SERREFINE — Evan O'Dorney
- 2008 GUERDON — Sameer Mishra
- 2009 LAODICEAN — Shivashankar Kavya Shivashankar
And it's hard to imagine a more fitting closure to this page than a tribute to that very final word...
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