12/4/2023 0 Comments 7th grade spelling bee words 2021![]() She began to spell it, stopped herself, and asked for the language of origin (Latin from a Swedish name). “Does this word contain like the English word ‘Murray,’ which would be the name of a comedian?” Zaila asked, referring to the actor Bill Murray and drawing laughs from the pronouncer and the judges. The pronouncer told her it meant a genus of tropical Asiatic and Australian trees having pinnate leaves with imbricated petals. That gave Zaila a chance to win it all with one more correct word.Īt first, she seemed flummoxed by her word, “Murraya,” grimacing a little. Chaitra got that wrong, exchanging the O in “neroli” for an E. Then “retene” (a chemical isolated especially from pine tar, rosin oil and various fossil resins), which Zaila spelled correctly.Īnd finally “neroli oil” (a fragrant pale yellow essential oil). The final duelįirst was “fewtrils” (things of little value), which Chaitra got right. The last few words were rattled off in a swift back-and-forth between them and the pronouncer. In the last few minutes of competition, it came down to two girls, Zaila and Chaitra Thummala, a 12-year-old from San Francisco. “It wasn’t this gamified thing that we do now,” she said. Stamper said was a return to spelling bees’ origin as a broader vocabulary exercise. Several spellers were eliminated in a round of questions about word meanings, which Ms. Words that foiled spellers included chrysal, athanor, cloxacillin, heliconius, torticollis, platylepadid and gewgaw, and at one point judges had to review a video replay to determine whether a speller said the letter I or Y. “I have the dictionary open in front of me, and I edited this dictionary, and I have not spelled any of these words right on the first try,” she said at one point on Thursday night.Īnd it did not take long for most of the 11 finalists to stumble. This year’s words were especially difficult, said Kory Stamper, a lexicographer and the author of “Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries.” But students have consistently matched them.īee organizers imposed new rules this year, including a live vocabulary round, saying they wanted to challenge the skills of spellers who could exhaust their list of challenging words and endure marathon, four-hour contests like the one in 2019. The national spelling bee has been held for almost 100 years, and for decades, its organizers have steadily made the words more difficult, veering into the realms of medicine, art, zoology and antiquity. (The bee was canceled last year because of pandemic concerns.) Ever tougher words On Thursday night, she faced not only a battery of obscure words - fidibus, ancistroid and depreter among others - but new spelling bee rules enacted after eight students were crowned co-champions in 2019. Zaila’s journey from her hometown near New Orleans to the spelling bee finals in Orlando, Fla., spanned two years, 18 rounds of competition and tens of thousands of words she pored over with her father. The bee, she said, was a “gate-opener to being interested in education.” On Friday morning, she told “Good Morning America” that she hoped to see more African American students “doing well in the Scripps Spelling Bee” in a few years.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |