Laodicean

Thirteen-year-old Kavya Shivashankar of Olathe, Kansas, spelled "laodicean," Thursday night to take top honors in the 82nd annual Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The eighth-grader won $40,000 in cash and prizes for nailing the final word. Pronounced lay-odd-uh-see-an, the word means lukewarm or indifferent, particularly in matters of politics or religion.

This year's bee -- an event that has skyrocketed in popularity, thanks to exposure on television and in movies -- started on Tuesday in Washington with a record 293 spellers.

The competition went 15 rounds. Spellers ranged from 9 to 15 years old. According to the contest's Web site, 117 of the spellers speak languages other than English, and English was not the first language of 33 of the spellers.

The first National Spelling Bee was in 1925 and featured nine contestants.