Today we launch The Times Spelling Bee Championship. Schools are invited to enter their buzziest stars for ordeal in the fiery furnace of “beleaguer” and “accommodation”. This is to hack into the thorniest jungle in the curriculum. There are those who assert that English spelling is a mess, and that what is needed is spelling reform: to spell words exactly as we speak. To which we answer: “Exactly as who speaks, pray?” And shall we remove the works of Chaucer and Shakespeare (both liberal spellers) from the common marketplace so that they need translation?

Spelling is a key to a word's meaning. Simpler languages, such as the Romance, naturally have simpler spellings because they have a pure pedigree. English is the mongrel Muvver Tongue: a rich stew of Celtic, Latin, Greek, Nordic, Norman, Yiddish and every other language since the fall of the Tower of Babel. Orthography (correct spelling) displays the roots of the word, as menhirs sticking through the turf of centuries.

For spelling is frozen history. “Treacle” comes ultimately from thêrion, the Ancient Greek for a venomous creature: the first physicians applied treacle as an antidote to snakebite. That “w” in pillow (Latin pulvinar) and wine (Latin vinum) indicates that the words had come into Old English before Hengist and Horsa landed.

The English way is to amend spelling by evolution, not revolution. (It is interesting how slowly British evolves into American spelling over matters such as that whoreson letter Z and the -our endings.) Of course, some great writers have been rotten spellers. But correct spelling is good manners, educated, and, in its quiet way, a thing of beauty. Courage, mes braves. Spell well.