Spelling bees: getting harder?

In My Humble Opinion
1

(Gaudere’s Law applies; there’s probably going to be a botched word in this post.)

You’ve probably seen the glurge passed around showing incredibly difficult fifth and sixth grade math and history tests from the late 1800s. Most of those tests were actually advanced high school and college level exams, but the impression the reader gets is “We were tougher and smarter back then, before those feel-good liberal hippies watered down the curriculum with their new math and foo-foo self-esteem garbage.”

Evan M. O’Dorney, a 13-year-old speller from Danville, Calif., won the 2007 Scripps National Spelling Bee, with the final word “serrefine”. Wikipedia has a list of winning words used in past national spelling bees. Looking at the list, I’ve reached the conclusion that today’s kids have it much, much harder.

These were the winning words between 2000 and the present.

demarche
succedaneum
prospicience
pococurante
autochthonous
appoggiatura
ursprache
serrefine

All of the above words are underlined in red in the spell checker in Mozilla Firefox.

Between 1930 and 1940, the winning words were:

fracas
foulard
knack
torsion
deteriorating
intelligible
interning
promiscuous
sanitarium
canonical
therapy

Firefox didn’t underline any of the 1930-1940 words.

The names of the winners also present an interesting look at the changing face of the United States. Between 1930 and 1940:

Helen Jensen
Ward Randall
Dorothy Greenwalk
Alma Roach
Sarah Wilson
Clara Mohler
Jean Trowbridge
Waneeta Beckley
Louisville Times
Elizabeth Ann Rice
Laurel Kuykendall

Between 2000 and the present

George Abraham Thampy
Sean Conley
Pratyush Buddiga
Sai R. Gunturi
David Scott Pilarski Tidmarsh
Anurag Kashyap
Katharine Close
Evan O’Dorney

2

Oh … “Louisville Times” was left in by accident.

3

To quote, well, yourself:

:wink:

One easily noticed aspect of the two lists is that the 1930-40 list is of words that were relatively common in that day - it’s not as if they picked words that became “popular” subsequent to their being in the spelling bee.

On the other hand, I don’t see any of the post-2000 words becoming as widely used as “canonical” or “therapy”.

4

In the recent list, the only word whose meaning I know is “autochtonous”, yet somehow I don’t quite get the feeling that I should worry about my lack of vocabulary - in the old list, I know all of them.

5

One factor, I’m sure, is that there are a lot more kids competing in it now. Greater competition means harder words.

6

That’s probably because the word *autóctono *is widely used in Spanish. I also suspect that the word succedaneum has the same roots as the word *sucedaneo *in Spanish. Off to grab a mataburro. :smiley:

7

Well, let’s look at the list (this would be easier if I had an OED to see when they first came into English):

demarche: A direct French loan, no spelling change

succedaneum: Modern Latin, neuter singular of Latin succedaneus ‘acting as substitute’, from succedere ‘come close after’, from sub- + cedere ‘go’.

prospicience: It means “foresight”, but I can’t find the etymology; sounds Greek or Latin to me

pococurante: From Italian poco ‘little’ + curante ‘caring’, from curare ‘to care’.

autochthonous: Again, can’t find the etymology; again, most likely Latin or Greek

appoggiatura: Direct loan from Italian

ursprache: Direct loan from German

serrefine: French, but that’s all I know.

8

I think that’s it in a nutshell. Between the prize money and the ESPN coverage the Spelling Bee is a huge deal these days: there are kids who spend almost every waking minute preparing for it. Come to think of it I’m pretty sure there was quite a recent documentary about it all.