The Greek word koinonia, commonly used to mean Christian fellowship or communion, was the final test in this year’s National Scripps Spelling Bee in the US last week.
The word, which Scripps formally defined as “intimate spiritual communion and participative sharing in a common religious commitment and spiritual community”, was spelt correctly by teenage Texan Karthik Nemmani. It was the 14-year-old’s first time participating in the national finals.
The selection of the word – which is used some 20 times in the New Testament – was a hot topic among Christians on social media following the win. Among them US author and commentator Rachel Held Evans who tweeted: “If you grew up evangelical in the 90s you can totally spell koinonia because you had a crush on the drummer for a youth group band by that name.”
It’s not the first time that a Christian-linked word has won the competition – in 2009, the winning word was Laodicean, which means half-hearted and comes from a reference to the church of Laodicea in the New Testament Book of Revelation.
