exorbitant: exceeding the customary or appropriate limits in intensity, quality, amount, or size (from Merriam-Webster)
Last Saturday was the annual Atlanta Open Orthographic Meet (aka spelling bee), held at Manuel's Tavern every year on the first Saturday after Valentine's Day. This year's first round was about average -- you could make a couple errors and still advance. I made my annual stupid mistake with "exorbitant", spelling it with an "h" because I had "exhort" bouncing around in my head. My annual tradition is to obsess about stupid first round mistakes, so "exorbitant" it is.
Nonetheless, with only two mistakes ("ruching"?! WTF?!) I managed to make it to the second round, which I've done a couple times before but it's fairly rare. All that does is postpone when I can relax and start drinking harder.
Joining us at our table this year was one of Sharon's coworkers and her husband. This was the first time for Nedda and Keith, and Nedda turned out to do very well. She got 19/20 in the first round, and 10/15 in the second round, good enough to make it to the third round! Sadly, the proctors screwed up and didn't announce that she'd made it to the third round, and lacking her sheet (people who are still in the hunt pass them in for scoring) she shrugged it off as a miscount on her part. Later in the bee the proctors realized their mistake, to some grumbling and even slight booing from the audience. Nedda wuz robbed!
Here's a sampling of this year's words:
Round 1: etiquette, corollary, echinacea
Round 2: tuff, acequia, intaglio
Round 3: chrestomathy, corybantic, labret
Round 4: cnidarian, nitid, khedive
I've written about this annual event before -- click to see the 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008 and 2007 writeups.
I would've made it through the first round based on the examples you posted, but would've been out in the second round fer sher. Alas!
Posted by: Scott | February 21, 2013 at 10:36 PM