‘Did he just throw the letter away?’: Indian-born Shrey Parikh aces ‘cywyddau’ in US spelling bee. this is what it means

The dictionary definition is: “A verse consisting of pairs of 7-syllable lines, with varying cynghanedd and final rhyme, falling alternately on stressed and unstressed syllables.”

It also provides an example of how word be used. “Among his loose papers was discovered… the autograph of a Welsh poem, a cywydd by Hopkins himself.”

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the word was invented in South Wales in the 14th century by Dafydd ap Gwilym. He further explained: “ [cywyddau] It was the dominant poetic form in Wales from the 14th to the early 17th centuries; its Golden Age was from the mid-14th to the mid-15th centuries, while its Silver Age was from about 1500 to 1650, when an excessive focus on stylistic rules hindered free poetic expression.

A third jokingly commented: “Cywyddau: very aggressive sneeze.” A fourth wrote: “Cywyddau? What?”

In addition to “cywyddau,” Parikh spelled out 31 other words in just 90 seconds. He easily beat runner-up Ishaan Gupta of New Jersey, who completed 25 words. His winning word was the medical term “bromocriptine.”

“I’m not excited at all because, honestly, I feel like regular spelling does a better job of showing what the spelling means,” Parikh told reporters after winning the prestigious award.

“But I accepted that it was going to be over, I calmed myself down, I drank some water… I just tried to take it all in stride and do the best I could.”