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Sports: To the victor go the guerdon
OK, technically it’s not a “sport,” but, hey, ESPN360.com and ESPN covered the quarter- and semifinals. And last night on ABC, 13-year-old Sameer Mishra of West Lafayette, Ind., won the 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee by correctly spelling the word “guerdon,” which means “something that one has earned or gained.” The eighth grader won $35,000 in cash plus more than $5,000 in other prizes.
Runner-up Sidharth Chand, 12, of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., fell short by misspelling “prosopopoeia,” which, according Merriam-Webster, means “a figure of speech in which an imaginary or absent person is represented as speaking or acting.” One of the pre-Bee favorites, Tia Thomas, 13, a homeschooler from Coarsegold, Calif., finished third, misspelling “opificer,” a skilled or artistic worker. Another favorite, homeschooled Matthew Evans, a friendly rival of Tia’s from Albuquerque, N.M., was unexpectedly eliminated earlier in the day in the semifinals when he misspelled “secernent,” a word dealing with secretion. Both Tia and Matthew received rare standing ovations as they left the stage.
In attendance last night was 94-year-old Frank Neuhauser, who won the first national bee in 1925 by correctly spelling the word “gladiolus.”
(It’s interesting to note that as I ran this post through spell-check, all the words from the competition were flagged, except for the winning words, “guerdon” from 2008 and “gladiolus” from 1925.)
back to top9 Comments to “Sports: To the victor go the guerdon”
Congratulations are in order for young Mr. Mishra!
My wife and I are proud of youths in this country who are dedicated to excellence, hard work and to being decent kids. Nothing like seeing a young person be rewarded for winning a tough competition like the National Spelling Bee.
YAY!
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The English language contains over 1 million words (including scientific terms), whereas German has only about 185,000 and French fewer than 100,000 (and shrinking). This makes English spelling bees particularly challenging.
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It is interesting that 10 students of Indian origin made it to the semi-finals.
According to the Indian Times, “The Indian fetish for the Spelling Bee contests was sparked off by the 1985 triumph of Balu Natarajan, 13, who won the title by correctly spelling the word “milieu.” Word of his exploit spread among the Indian community and the event came to be seen as a passport to acceptance in a competitive society.
Since then, half a dozen Indian-American kids have won the title, including five in the last nine years, making the event a lively Indian stomping ground. ”
Disclaimer for the hypersensitive: The term ’stomping ground’ was a quote from an Indian newspaper.
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Congratulations to these kids.
I used to do spelling bees in my (comparative) youth. I never got higher than Regionals.
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Spellbound and Akeelah and the Bee are two wonderful movies made about the annual spelling bee.
And I love the fact you put this in the Sports category!
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I almost didn’t bother with this post, since it was listed as “Sports,” but I noticed the word guerdon and took a look just because I knew that had been the winning word in the spelling bee last night. I did a post on it in my own blog, expressing my ambivalence over the idea of studying these tens of thousands of words, including many so rare that, as Mickey points out above, even our spell checkers don’t recognize them. (I found one that even Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary doesn’t have.) There’s also some interesting info on the differences between American and British spelling.
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I have never seen any of the words Mickey mentioned except “guerdon”. It is in an old hymn called “Art thou weary”, written in the 8th century by Stephen the Sabaite. Verse 4 says:
If I find him, if I follow,
What his guerdon here?
Many a sorrow, many a labour,
Many a tear.
I had to look up the word when I first saw the hymn. What a thought for the name-it-and-claim-it crowd, that the Christian’s reward in this world is not riches but work and sorrow.
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This is going to sound mean. Maybe it is.
I watched the bee on Friday night, and was just as impressed as the rest of you. I’ve also seen Spellbound and loved it. These kids put forth an incredible amount of effort. BUT…
…Is it just me, or is it fair to say that many of these kids are spending their entire childhood spelling obscure words while sacrificing interpersonal relationships with their peers? There are exceptions, but clearly there is a lack of social skills among the elite spellers.
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#8 “is it fair to say that many of these kids are spending their entire childhood spelling obscure words while sacrificing interpersonal relationships with their peers?”
Graceland,
Possibly. On the other hand, it’s possible that some of those kids simply care for books more than interpersonal relationships, and may have actually improved their social skills by participating in an event such as this that requires them to interact with both adults and kids they’ve never met before, and to appear in public under stressful circumstances.
I was a good speller but never had an interest in learning words purely for the sake of competition. To this day I prefer not to use a Scrabble dictionary because I want to compete (with family or friends – I don’t look for Scrabble competitions) on the basis of words that are a working part of my vocabulary (passive if not active, but ones I actually encounter in real life). It was the same when it came to taking standardized tests such as SAT or GRE – I wanted to demonstrate what I already knew, not what I studied in order to do well on a test.
But I still had poor interpersonal skills. Even without dedicating hours to studying obscure subjects, I still preferred books to people. My teachers tried to encourage me to make friends, but I simply didn’t have much in common with my peers as far as I could tell. The kids who compete in this spelling bee do have something in common with each other, and I have read that some of them had made friendships with one another that have lasted over several years of competing at this level.
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