Spelling Insects?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I watched bits of “Spellbound” yesterday on TV and it got me wondering whether any mistakes have ever been made, or if a good game could be made up based on it…

Official: “Contestant number 12 your word is mnemonic.”

12: “Nemonik, um…N-E-M-O-N-I-C, nemonik”

Official: “Correct. Contestant 287 your word is paramnesia.”

287: “Paramnesia? Could I have a definition?”

Official: “We cannot remember the correct meaning for that.”

…

It also got me wondering why it was called a spelling bee. Is there a strange insect in America (much like the Sphinx in Egypt - although less mythical) which stings you if you can’t spell the word it says? M-M-M-M-M?

Of course we could have fun with sounds and onomatopoeia

839: “Excel, X-L, excel” ding

Official: “Contestant 45 your word is krrrrpchuuuffffshhhhhhhhh”

45: “What?! Can I have a definition?”

Official: “The sound of a Schweppes lorry hitting a wall”

45: “Can I have a diferent word?”

…

One reason why an international spelling bee wouldn’t work…

Official: “Your word is color”

27: “Colour, C-O-L-O-U-R, colour” ding

…

Would we allow synonyms?

66: “Homeopathic, W-A-T-E-R-Y, homeopathic”
170: “Copulate…F-U-” ding

Offical: “The correct spelling is C-O-P-U-L-A-T-E. Contestant 3 your word is missing.”

Silence

Offical: “Contestant 3?”

3: “Have you found it yet?”

How about a smelling bee?

sniff “Chloro…zzzzzz”

PT

2

:smack: Obviously contestant 45 cannot spell different…

PT

3

They used to have “quilting bees,” so I’m thinking a “bee” means a get-together of one kind or another. But why a bee?

I had a linguistics professor once tell us that they don’t have spelling bees in other countries because they’d go on forever. Only English has enough oddly and irregularly-spelled words to make spelling bees possible.

4

One theory is that this sense of “bee” is derived from the Middle English bene, which means “a favor”, and the later dialectal form been, which refers specifically to “voluntary help given by neighbors toward the accomplishment of a particular task”.