History of the Bee

The Beginnings of Spelling Bees

The spelling bee is an American folk tradition with roots in the Puritans’ landing on Plymouth Rock. Through the 1700s, spelling bees became part of the Colonial education. By the early 1800s, spelling matches became social events; without televisions and computers, teenagers would flock to the schoolhouse on winter evenings for a lively spelling bee. Bees became so much fun, in fact, that Puritans dubbed them “spelling schools” in fear that they otherwise appeared too rowdy.

As the Colonial period in New England passed, spelling contests slowly fell out of fashion, yet at the same time grew as lower class families traveled West; being able to spell correctly was a symbol of status. Through the Civil War, spelling felt old-fashioned, yet picked up in popularity again in 1871 when the novel The Hoosier Schoolmaster, a story about a child in a spelling match, was first published. The success of the novel propelled bees into vogue, thus setting off the “epidemic” of spelling matches in the 1870s.

After another brief hiatus, spelling bees were once more wildly popular in the first decade of the 20th century; in June of 1908, the first nationwide bee was held, leading eventually to the 1925 Louisville Courier-Journal bee—the forerunner to the Scripps National Bee.

Origin of the Word “Bee”

The word bee in early American life referred specifically to social events in which the entire community came together—like bumblebees in a hive—for a common goal, as in a quilting bee or a barn raising bee or a corn husking bee. The earliest known example in print is a spinning bee, in 1769. Other early occurrences include a husking bee (1816), apple bee (1827), and logging bee (1836). The phrase spelling bee seems to be specifically American; it first appeared in print in 1875, but it seems certain that the word was used orally for several years before that.

Those who used the word, including most early students of language, assumed that it was the same word as the one used to refer to the bee insect. They thought this particular meaning had been inspired by the obvious semblance between these human gatherings and the social nature of a beehive. But in recent years scholars have rejected this explanation, suggesting instead that this bee is a completely different word.

The word may come from the Middle English word bene, meaning "a prayer" or "a favor" (which is related to the more familiar word boon). In England, a dialect form of this word, been or bean, refers to "voluntary help given by neighbors toward the accomplishment of a particular task." (Webster's Third New International Dictionary). Bee may simply be a shortened form of been, but no one is entirely certain.