[ad_1]
Aditi Muthukumar, an eighth grader from Westminster, qualified for the quarterfinals at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
OXON HILL, Md. — Tuesday wasn’t butyraceous for the students who were knocked out of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, which included one of the two qualifiers from Colorado.
Westminster’s Aditi Muthukumar, however, is moving on after she aced her three questions on Tuesday.
Muthukumar’s first word of the day was “nyctinasty.” If you’re like me, you’re asking yourself “what the heck does that mean?!” Well, I saved you a little time and googled it myself.
According to Merriam-Webster, nyctinasty is:
plant movement (such as the closing of a flower’s petals or the reorientation of a leaf’s position) that occurs in response to changes in light intensity (such as the onset of darkness) and that typically involves changes in cellular turgor : the nastic movement of the parts of some plants that occurs in the absence of a directional stimulus and that is associated with the plant’s circadian cycle
Got it? Alright, let’s move on.
Aditi competed at last year’s Spelling Bee, tying for 74th place. She told the Associated Press she tried to address her weaknesses on words derived from French or from the many languages of the Indian subcontinent. But she expects she’ll have to confront a word she doesn’t know while competing in her final bee.
“I mean, probably,” she said. “And I hope I’ll be OK with it.”
Colorado’s other qualifier, Cooper Edwards, a fifth-grader from Boulder, got to the third round after correctly spelling “echelon,” and giving the correct answer when asked what it means if something is “parochial.”
He was knocked out after misspelling “butyraceous.” That means of or like butter.
There were 249 spellers in the competition this year from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, U.S. territories and other countries.
The semifinals of the National Spelling Bee will air live on ION on Wednesday, and the finals will air live on Thursday.
WHEAT RIDGE: ‘Does he have any other things that might bite me?’: Officer gets a shock while searching vehicle
SUGGESTED VIDEOS: Latest from 9NEWS
[ad_2]
Source link
