spelling bee
37
2.9
- noun
- /ˈspɛlɪŋ bi/
:
concurso de ortografía
- Last week, I participated in the school spelling bee and won second place.
- win a spelling bee
- a spelling bee winner
- a spelling bee champion
Welcome to the third annual Spelling Bee, Teeny Wax.
- Welcome to the third annual Spelling Bee, Teeny Wax.
- So I obviously never won the national Spelling Bee or else it would be googleable.
- And in the spelling bee, I spelled the word sincerely wrong.
- Welcome, everyone, to the first annual Extra Joe Spelling Bee.
- Maybe they were the pageant kid or the soccer star or the spelling bee champ or the chess whiz or the child actor or the virtuoso musician.
- I never I couldn't do the spelling bee, but it's Cy Cy.
- But our she won the fucking spelling bee, dude.
- But I did record Kim spelling bee shorts.
- Just reminds me of that kid from the the spelling bee.
- However, playing the spelling bee and endlessly doom scrolling on TikTok are different activities.
- Screaming at them for missing the goal or missing the jump, or missing or getting the spelling bee word wrong, or for not getting the best role in The Nutcracker.
Examples
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Ladies and gentlemen, the new national spelling bee champion from Denver, Colorado.
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"Everyone wanted me to lose in spelling bees," she says.
Fiction book (2001) -
- This one time, I won the class spelling bee.
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- We're having a spelling bee.
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What did I care about winning the spelling bee?
Fiction book (2001) -
This young lady is the state spelling-bee champion.
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In last year's spelling bee, I finished in third place, and I'm also interested in political sciences like my father was before me.
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Don't you want to prepare for the spelling bee?
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But I won a spelling bee and my dad cried at the spelling bee.
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Her other grandchild, a raven-haired eight-year-old boy, informs her, "I won the spelling bee, spelling two words, s-c-i-e-n-c-e and m-a-t-h-e-m-a-t-i-c-s."
Fiction book (1997)
Synonyms
111
6.3
A gathering where people meet to work together on a task or compete
1
1.6
A competition where people try to write words correctly and are out if they make a mistake
A contest where people spell words and leave if they spell one wrong
How Competitive
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is directly compositional: 'spelling' (the act of writing words correctly) plus 'bee' (a gathering or contest) yields a gathering/contest for spelling. Although the specialized sense of 'bee' as a contest is somewhat cultural, a B1 learner who knows both constituent meanings can readily infer 'spelling bee' means a competition to spell words.
Etymology
Spelling bee comes from an older use of bee, which meant a friendly 'gathering' where people met to help each other with one task, like sewing or husking corn. A spelling bee was simply a meeting to test and practise spelling, and that picture of a group event became the name for the modern contest.