What were you doing at age five? Odds are you weren’t winning spelling bees like Edith Fuller just did.

Edith is from Oklahoma, is home-schooled, and just became the youngest person to ever qualify for the National Spelling Bee by winning the Scripps Green Country National Spelling Bee this past Saturday.

Her winning word was jnana, which is a word of Sanskrit origin meaning “knowledge”. Edith has plenty of that, and way more than most of us have when it comes to spelling, or knowing words of Sanskrit origin.

To make this story even better, the Tulsa World went and learned more about where Edith came from, and the story is beyond amazing:

Edith was an early crowd favorite because of her age. But as she began correctly spelling words like odori, colloquial and sevruga, it became clear she was a true contender.

“It’s fun to share her with everyone,” said her mother, Annie Fuller. “I knew she’d be a novelty, so I’m proud she held her own.”

Fuller said the family learned of her daughter’s knack for spelling last summer while they were having dinner together.

The parents were quizzing the kids on spelling, and when Edith spelled “restaurant” without having been taught the word they were impressed.

“We knew there was something special there,” Fuller said.

Only after one can spell “sevruga”, which is a type of caviar, apparently, and odori, a traditional Japanese dance, can one be taken seriously in the cutthroat world of spelling bees. But hey, now you have someone to root for in May when the big bee comes around.

[Deadspin/Tulsa World]

About Matt Lichtenstadter

Recent Maryland graduate. I've written for many sites including World Soccer Talk, GianlucaDiMarzio.com, Testudo Times, Yahoo's Puck Daddy Blog and more. Houndstooth is still cool, at least to me. Follow me @MattsMusings1 on Twitter, e-mail me about life and potential jobs at matthewaaron9 at Yahoo dot com.