Spelling Bee Champion Defeated by Word She Helped Define

Twelve-year-old spelling bee champion Adelaide Grapheme was eliminated from the National Spelling Bee on Thursday after misspelling 'eleemosynary' — a word whose dictionary definition was written by her mother, Dr. Patricia Grapheme, a lexicographer at Merriam-Webster, who was seated in the third row of the audience. 'She spelled it E-L-E-E-M-O-S-Y-N-E-R-Y,' said head judge Marcus Diphthong. 'The correct spelling is E-L-E-E-M-O-S-Y-N-A-R-Y. The "ary" ending, not "ery." She was one letter off.' Dr. Grapheme, who wrote the revised definition of 'eleemosynary' (meaning 'of, relating to, or dependent on charity') for the dictionary's most recent edition, was observed burying her face in her program. 'I wrote the definition,' Dr. Grapheme said afterward. 'I typed every letter of that word at least fifty times during the drafting process. I included the pronunciation, the etymology from the medieval Latin "eleemosynarius," and three illustrative quotations. My daughter and I reviewed it at dinner. She knew the meaning. She knew the etymology. She knew the part of speech. She did not know how to spell it, and I — the person who typed it fifty times — did not think to mention that.' Adelaide was philosophical. 'Words are weird,' she said. 'The spelling and the meaning are like two completely different skills. Mom is really good at one of them. I'm supposedly good at the other. Tonight, neither of us was good at either.' The word that eventually won the competition was 'perspicacious,' which Adelaide noted she could spell 'in my sleep.' She has asked her mother to review a list of 'words with tricky suffixes,' a project Dr. Grapheme has described as 'the least I can do.'