The Man Behind the Words at the Scripps National Spelling Bee
Every year, millions of viewers tune in to watch extraordinarily gifted young spellers compete on the national stage at the Scripps National Spelling Bee — arguably the most prestigious spelling competition in the world. The cameras follow nervous contestants as they approach the microphone, spell impossibly complex words, and either advance or exit the stage with tears in their eyes. But standing quietly in the background, ready to answer every question about pronunciation, definition, and etymology, is a man whose love of language is as profound as it is unusual: Brian Sietsema.
Sietsema holds a genuinely rare distinction. He is both a trained linguist and a Greek Orthodox priest, two vocations that might seem worlds apart but, in his hands, weave together into a singular life devoted to the deep structure and sacred history of human language. His role at the Scripps National Spelling Bee is to serve as the official pronouncer and language authority — the person competitors rely on when they need to confirm how a word sounds, what it means, or where it comes from. In a competition where a single letter can mean the difference between triumph and heartbreak, that role carries enormous weight.
A Childhood Defined by Curiosity and One Unforgettable Word
Like many great intellectual journeys, Sietsema's began in a small, almost accidental moment. In third grade, he wandered over to a garage sale at a friend's house with just 50 cents in his pocket. He browsed the tables and selected three books that caught his eye, each priced at 50 cents. In a stroke of luck — or perhaps fate — his friend's mother told him the books he had chosen were on special and sent him home with all three for free. Among them was a collection of Edgar Allan Poe stories titled Masterpieces of Mystery.
His mother, aware that the collection contained dark and macabre tales such as "The Tell-Tale Heart," told her son he would need to wait a few years before reading it. Naturally, as any curious child would, he started reading it immediately.
It was within the pages of Poe's lesser-known story "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall" that young Sietsema encountered the word that would, in a sense, shape the rest of his life. In the story, the narrator Pfaall describes arriving at the moon in a balloon and tumbling into a crowd of lunar inhabitants who were "eyeing me and my balloon askant, with their arms set a-kimbo." The word akimbo — with or without a hyphen, as Sietsema is careful to note — was entirely foreign to him. He asked his parents. They did not know. He checked the family dictionary. It was not there. He asked his teachers. They were stumped. He searched the dictionaries in his classroom and his school library. Nothing.
"For years, I didn't know what this word meant," Sietsema has said. The mystery lingered in his mind throughout his childhood. It was not until he reached college that he finally found a dictionary comprehensive enough to provide the answer: the moon dwellers in Poe's story had simply been standing with their hands on their hips and their elbows pointing outward. Akimbo is his favorite word to this day.
Why That Single Word Matters So Much
It may seem surprising that a man who works with thousands of words every year — many of them extraordinarily rare, drawn from Latin, Greek, French, Sanskrit, and dozens of other languages — would choose such a relatively simple word as his favorite. But the significance of akimbo lies not in its complexity but in what it represents: the moment a young boy realized that language is a vast and largely unmapped territory, full of words that neither parents nor teachers nor dictionaries always know.
That realization planted a seed. It sent Sietsema on a lifelong pursuit of linguistic knowledge — the kind of deep, patient, systematic study of how languages are structured, how words are formed, how sounds shift across centuries and cultures. It is exactly the kind of passion that leads a person not merely to learn vocabulary but to understand the architecture of language itself.
The Intersection of Linguistics and Faith
Sietsema's path eventually led him to both academic linguistics and the Greek Orthodox priesthood, two pursuits that share more common ground than most people realize. The Greek Orthodox tradition places enormous emphasis on the precise and reverent use of language in liturgy, scripture, and prayer. Ancient Greek is the language of the New Testament, and the tradition has preserved a relationship with classical language that is both scholarly and deeply spiritual. For someone already captivated by the roots and structures of words, this was fertile ground.
His background in Greek, combined with his formal training in linguistics, makes him exceptionally well-suited to the demands of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Many of the most challenging words in competitive spelling trace their roots directly to ancient Greek or Latin, and Sietsema's ability to navigate those etymological pathways with authority and accuracy gives competitors the reliable, expert guidance they need under pressure.
What the Scripps National Spelling Bee Represents
The Scripps National Spelling Bee has been held annually since 1925 and draws hundreds of the most talented young spellers in the United States and beyond. The competition is renowned not only for its difficulty but for what it teaches participants about discipline, preparation, and a genuine love of language. Contestants do not simply memorize words — they study their origins, their linguistic families, their patterns of construction. In this sense, every serious competitor undertakes a journey not entirely unlike Brian Sietsema's own.
- The Scripps National Spelling Bee tests knowledge of etymology, pronunciation, and definition, not just spelling ability.
- Competitors are permitted to ask the pronouncer for the word's language of origin, part of speech, definition, and use in a sentence.
- The competition has launched numerous careers in academia, law, medicine, and the arts among its alumni.
- Words drawn from ancient Greek and Latin make up a significant proportion of the most challenging competition vocabulary.
A Life Devoted to Language
Brian Sietsema's story is a reminder that the love of language often begins not in a classroom but in a moment of pure, unresolved curiosity. A word he could not find the meaning of as a child became the compass that oriented his entire intellectual and professional life. Today, standing at the microphone of one of the most-watched academic competitions in the world, he brings that same curiosity — and decades of hard-won expertise — to every speller who steps up and asks him for help.
In a world that increasingly values speed and surface-level knowledge, Sietsema's career is a testament to the rewards of going deep — of sitting with a question long enough, and caring about it seriously enough, that it eventually transforms you. His favorite word is akimbo. And in a quiet but meaningful way, the whole arc of his remarkable life has been spent standing with his arms outstretched — reaching into the depths of language on behalf of everyone who has ever encountered a word they didn't yet understand.