Murraya? Cernuous? Here’s how long ago these National Spelling Bee winning words were trending

Several Bay Area kids are slated to compete Thursday night in the grand finale of the Scripps National Spelling Bee in National Harbor, Maryland.

If you’ve ever watched the Spelling Bee, you’ve probably asked yourself: Where in the world do they come up with these words?

Case in point: Have you ever heard of the word “murraya” before? Pronounced: mr·ai·uh. That’s M-U-R-R-A-Y-A. Apparently it describes a certain type of tropical Asiatic and Australian tree.

If you got that wrong, that’s entirely understandable, since in 2019 it only appeared 0.0000000499% of the time compared to all other words in English language books stored on Google. According to our analysis of the data, Murraya was a much more commonly-used word back in the 1800s, but has fallen out of fashion over the last 223 years.

And that is not the only National Spelling Bee winning word that’s fallen out of favor. 2019 winner erysipelas, which refers to a skin condition, peaked back in the 1880s. Meanwhile a few select winning words, like bougainvillea, have actually become more commonly used in recent years.

We analyzed the 11 winning words from the Scripps National Spelling Bee since 2018. In 2019, eight kids won the championship, so there’s plenty of words to choose from that year.

We mapped how frequently these winning words appeared in books stored on Google compared to all other words. In the graphic below, select a word and see how frequently it appeared in English language books, going back to 1800. Click one of the lines of data to see the word’s definition. How many do you actually know? Which words have become less popular over time?

And good luck playing along with the Bee. It starts at 5 p.m. Pacific Time on the ION Network. Click here for more info on how to watch.