Saturday, June 09, 2018

Taylor Swift meets p-s-e-u-d-e-p-i-g-r-a-p-h-a

I KEEP SAYING YOU GOTTA KNOW THESE THINGS: Spelling Bee's Dr. Bailly quotes Taylor Swift (Nick Schwartz, USA Today).
Scripps National Spelling Bee pronouncer Jacques Bailly surprised 11-year-old Abhijay Kodali with his example sentence for the word pseudepigrapha by launching into Taylor Swift's 'Shake It Off."

"Pseudepigrapha is a plural noun. It means spurious words purporting to originate from biblical characters, as in 'Jasmine realized the speaker was spouting pseudepigrapha as soon as he quoted Moses saying 'Haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate, baby. I'm just gonna shake shake shake shake shake. Shake it off.'"
Abhijay Kodali spelled the word correctly. But another contestant won the competition with the correct spelling of ... wait for it ... "koinonia."

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