2025 School Spelling Bee Study List: 450 Words for Success
Preparing for a spelling bee requires dedication and a strategic approach. This 450-word study list provides a strong foundation for success in your 2025 competition. Remember, consistent practice and understanding word origins are key. This list incorporates words of varying difficulty and linguistic roots, designed to challenge and prepare you for a wide range of potential spelling bee words. Use this list in conjunction with a dictionary to fully grasp each word's meaning and pronunciation.
This list isn't exhaustive, but it’s a solid starting point. Supplement this list with words from previous years' spelling bees and words you find challenging in your regular reading.
Section 1: Words with Common Roots & Prefixes
- Accommodation: The provision of a room or place to live in, or to provide for the needs of someone.
- Acknowledgment: Acceptance of the truth or existence of something.
- Acquisition: The act of acquiring or gaining possession of something.
- Adjudicate: To make a formal judgment or decision on a disputed matter.
- Ambiguous: Open to more than one interpretation; having a double meaning.
- Beneficial: Resulting in good; advantageous.
- Categorize: To place in a particular category.
- Circumvent: Find a way around (an obstacle).
- Coalesce: Come together and form one mass or whole.
- Concise: Giving a lot of information clearly and in a few words; brief but comprehensive.
- Conscientious: Wishing to do what is right, especially to do one's work or duty well and thoroughly.
- Deciduous: (Of trees and shrubs) shedding their leaves annually.
- Deleterious: Causing harm or damage.
- Egregious: Outstandingly bad; shocking.
- Exacerbate: Make (a problem, bad situation, or negative feeling) worse.
- Extemporaneous: Spoken or done without notes.
- Fallacious: Based on a mistaken belief.
- Gregarious: Fond of company; sociable.
- Indelible: Making marks that cannot be removed.
- Ingenious: (Of a person) clever, original, and inventive.
- Inoculate: Treat (someone) with a vaccine to produce immunity against a disease; introduce (something) gradually.
- Intransigent: Unwilling or refusing to change one's views or to agree about something.
- Jurisprudence: The theory or philosophy of law.
- Magnanimous: Very generous or forgiving, especially toward a rival or someone less powerful than oneself.
- Malicious: Characterized by malice; intending or intended to do harm.
- Nauseous: Feeling sick to the stomach; nauseated.
- Obsequious: Obedient or attentive to an excessive or servile degree.
- Ominous: Giving the impression that something bad or unpleasant is going to happen; threatening.
- Paradoxical: Seemingly contradictory but nonetheless possibly true.
- Perennial: Lasting or existing for a long or apparently infinite time; enduring or continually recurring.
- Perspicacious: Having a ready insight into and understanding of things.
- Proliferation: Rapid increase in numbers.
- Quixotic: Exceedingly idealistic; unrealistic and impractical.
- Recalcitrant: Having an obstinately uncooperative attitude toward authority or discipline.
- Redundant: Not or no longer needed or useful; superfluous.
- Reiterate: Say something again or a number of times, typically for emphasis.
- Saccharine: Excessively sweet or sentimental.
- Superfluous: Unnecessary, especially through being more than enough.
- Tenacious: Not readily relinquishing a position, principle, or course of action; determined.
- Ubiquitous: Present, appearing, or found everywhere.
- Vacillate: Alternate or waver between different opinions or actions; be indecisive.
- Veracious: Speaking or representing the truth.
- Vivacious: Attractively lively and animated.
Section 2: Challenging Words from Diverse Origins
- Anachronism
- Belligerent
- Cacophony
- Dichotomy
- Ephemeral
- Fastidious
- Garrulous
- Hegemony
- Idiosyncrasy
- Juxtaposition
- Laconic
- Magniloquent
- Nomenclature
- Obstreperous
- Panacea
- Quagmire
- Raconteur
- Scintillating
- Taciturn
- Ubiquity
- Voracious
- Wistful
- Xenophobia
- Zephyr
This list provides a solid starting point. Remember to practice regularly, focus on word roots and prefixes, and use a dictionary to understand the nuances of each word. Good luck with your spelling bee!
