spelling bee
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of spelling bee
First recorded in 1870–75
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
A lot of them had excelled in school: We talked to a boy that had just won a spelling bee, for example.
From Slate • Mar. 20, 2026
In 1992, Vice President Dan Quayle corrected a 12-year-old spelling bee contestant on camera, incorrectly instructing him to add the letter “e” onto the end of the word “potato.”
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 11, 2026
On the other side sits Ainsley, who would lose a grade-school spelling bee to a bag of hair extensions yet manages to get into college as a cheerleading squad walk-on.
From Salon • Nov. 16, 2025
Aliyah Alpert, who finished ninth in 2022, missed the bee entirely last year because she flubbed the word “recoup” in the Yavapai County spelling bee in her home state of Arizona.
From Seattle Times • May 29, 2024
I first met her when she and I had entered the Gaston spelling bee in the seventh grade.
From "While the World Watched: A Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age during the Civil Rights Movement" by Carolyn Maull McKinstry
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
