In 8th grade English, every Thursday was a spelling bee and if you won, you got an automatic 100 on Friday's test. I usually won.
One of the last bee's I won was with onomatopoeia.
My son loved his V-Tech toy laptop with the spelling games when he was 4, so I encouraged him a bit-taught him that word just for kicks, along with its meaning. By the time he got to first grade (he was already reading and writing in kindergarten), his teacher approached me and said that he would be choosing his own spelling words each week as any kid who can spell
onomatopoeia and
apartment is way past bat, cat and sat.
Who'da thunk a silly spelling bee word would get so much mileage?