The National Spelling Bee ended with 8 winners — here's the winning word from every spelling bee since 1925

The 92nd Scripps National Spelling Bee ended with a record number of winners on Thursday after eight contestants spelled their way through 20 rounds of grueling words.

The field of 592 contestants had been whittled down to eight when, in the competition's 17th round, organizers announced that any contestant who spelled three more words correctly would be crowned champion.

It's not the first time there's been a tie in the annual spelling competition in fact, there have been six two-way ties in the bee's history, including each year from 2014 to 2016. But bee officials said this year's event was the only to end with more than two champions.

Each of the eight champions will receive a $50,000 prize and a trophy.

Since the inaugural competition in 1925, the words featured in the bee have become increasingly more difficult and obscure, requiring participants to have a commanding knowledge of root words, etymology, and world languages.

Scripps's list of "winning words" from previous competitions gives a glimpse at this evolution. Relatively simple words such as "knack," "therapy," and "initials" dominated earlier installments of the spelling bee, while modern-day champions have had to tackle humdingers like "feuilleton," "nunatak," and "gesellschaft."

The words spelled by this year's co-champions in the final round include "auslaut," "bougainvillea," and "pendeloque."

The shift in difficulty can be partly attributed to ESPN's coverage of the bee, which has attracted more students to the competition, Scripps spokeswoman Valerie Miller said. This was the 26th year ESPN aired the spelling bee.

But the biggest reason is simply that the spellers have gotten better.

"Words are more difficult now because the skills of the students also have expanded," Miller told Business Insider 2017. "These are the best of the best spellers, and the words they get in the national finals should be the greatest challenge."

Here are some of the championship-clinching words from previous spelling bees. You can find the full list of winning words below:

1925 gladiolus

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AP

Thechampionship word from the inauguralNational Spelling Bee in 1925 was "gladiolus," a flowering plant in the iris family.

Eleven-year-old Frank Neuhauser of Kentucky correctly spelled it to take home the top prize $500 in gold pieces and a trip to the White House.

When hereturned to Louisville,crowds greeted him with a ticker-tape parade and bouquets of aptly chosen gladiolus flowers, according to The Washington Post's obituary of Neuhauser, who died in 2011.

The New York Times called Neuhauser's winning word "a cakewalk by modern standards" that "harks back to simpler times."

In the photo to the right, sixth-place finisher Patrick Kelly poses with President Calvin Coolidge.

1936 eczema

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Illinois Daily Newspaper Collections

Jean Trowbridge of Iowa correctly spelled "eczema" a skin condition to clinch the 1936 spelling bee. She also had to correctly spell "predilection," which another finalist had missed.

Three decades later, "eczema" would resurface as the winning word at the 1965 bee.

1960 eudaemonic

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AP

Henry Feldman of Tennessee correctly spelled "eudaemonic" to win the 1960 spelling bee. "Eudaemonic" means "producing happiness."

1967 chihuahua

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AP

Jennifer Reinke of Nebraska clinched the 1967 title by correctly spelling "chihuahua." The dog breed shares its name with the Mexican stateit originates from.

1970 croissant

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AP

Libby Childress of North Carolina aced the word "croissant" to win the 1970 title.

1978 deification

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AP

"Deification" was the winning word at the 1978 spelling bee, correctly spelled by Peg McCarthy of Kansas.

"Deification" is the act of treating someone like a god.

1987 staphylococci

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AP

By the mid-1980s,the wordsused in the spelling bee finals became dramatically more difficult. Stephanie Petit of Pennsylvania won the 1987 beeby spelling "staphylococci," the plural form of atype of disease-causing bacteria.

1998 chiaroscurist

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AP

Jody-Anne Maxwell ofJamaica won the 1998 spelling bee, becoming the first non-American champion in the event'shistory.

Maxwellclinched the championship by spelling "chiaroscurist,"a painter who uses shadows and exaggerated lightcontrasts for artistic effect.

2005 appoggiatura

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Mark Wilson/Getty Images

San Diego's Anurag Kashyap won the 2005 spelling bee by spelling "appoggiatura," a word for anembellishing musical note.

2011 cymotrichous

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AP

Sukanya Roy of Pennsylvania won the 2011 spelling bee by correctly spelling "cymotrichous," a way to describe wavy hair.

2015 scherenschnitte; nunatak

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AP/Andrew Harnik

Two spellerswere named co-champions in 2015 after the finalists exhausted the entire list of words.

Vanya Shivashankar of Kansas correctly spelled "scherenschnitte" the art of paper cutting to earn her share of the title.

Missouri's Gokul Venkatachalam clinched withan equally obscure word "nunatak," a word of Greenlandic origin referring to a hill or mountain completely surrounded by glacial ice.

2016 Feldenkrais; gesellschaft

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Jacquelyn Martin/AP

2016's spelling bee ended in another tie after finalists exhausted the entire word list.

The two winning words were "Feldenkrais," spelled by Jairam Hathwar of New York, and "gesellschaft," spelled byNihar Sai Reddy Janga of Texas.

"Feldenkrais" is a type of exercise therapy devised by Israeli engineer Moshe Feldenkrais. "Gesellschaft," in social theory, is a word for a society in which human relations are impersonal.

2019 auslaut; erysipelas; bougainvillea; aiguillette; pendeloque; palama; cernuous; odylic

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AP/Susan Walsh

This year's spelling bee ended with a record eight winners after the final three rounds failed to stump any of the remaining contestants.

Event organizers announced in the 17th round that any contestant who could make it through three more rounds would be named a champion.

"We do have plenty of words remaining in our list, but we'll soon run out of words that will challenge you," event pronouncer Jacques Bailly told the contestants.

"We're throwing the dictionary at you. And so far, you are showing this dictionary who is boss."

The eight remaining contestants correctly spelled 47 consecutive words en route to their joint championship.

And here's the list of every winning word since 1925:

1925 gladiolus

1926 cerise

1927 luxuriance

1928 albumen

1929 asceticism

1930 fracas

1931 foulard

1932 knack

1933 torsion

1934 deteriorating

1935 intelligible

1936 interning

1937 promiscuous

1938 sanitarium

1939 canonical

1940 therapy

1941 initials

1942 sacrilegious

1946 semaphore

1947 chlorophyll

1948 psychiatry

1949 dulcimer

1950 meticulosity

1951 insouciant

1952 vignette

1953 soubrette

1954 transept

1955 crustaceology

1956 condominium

1957 schappe

1958 syllepsis

1959 catamaran

1960 eudaemonic

1961 smaragdine

1962 esquamulose

1963 equipage

1964 sycophant

1965 eczema

1966 ratoon

1967 Chihuahua

1968 abalone

1969 interlocutory

1970 croissant

1971 shalloon

1972 macerate

1973 vouchsafe

1974 hydrophyte

1975 incisor

1976 narcolepsy

1977 cambist

1978 deification

1979 maculature

1980 elucubrate

1981 sarcophagus

1982 psoriasis

1983 Purim

1984 luge

1985 milieu

1986 odontalgia

1987 staphylococci

1988 elegiacal

1989 spoliator

1990 fibranne

1991 antipyretic

1992 lyceum

1993 kamikaze

1994 antediluvian

1995 xanthosis

1996 vivisepulture

1997 euonym

1998 chiaroscurist

1999 logorrhea

2000 demarche

2001 succedaneum

2002 prospicience

2003 pococurante

2004 autochthonous

2005 appoggiatura

2006 Ursprache

2007 serrefine

2008 guerdon

2009 Laodicean

2010 stromuhr

2011 cymotrichous

2012 guetapens

2013 knaidel

2014 feuilleton; stichomythia

2015 scherenschnitte; nunatak

2016 Feldenkrais, gesellschaft

2017 marocain

2018 koinonia

2019 auslaut; erysipelas; bougainvillea; aiguillette; pendeloque; palama; cernuous; odylic

The National Spelling Bee ended with 8 winners — here's the winning word from every spelling bee since 1925

Here are some of the championship-clinching words from previous spelling bees. You can find the full list of winning words below:

1925 gladiolus

1936 eczema

1960 eudaemonic

1967 chihuahua

1970 croissant

1978 deification

1987 staphylococci

1998 chiaroscurist

2005 appoggiatura

2011 cymotrichous

2015 scherenschnitte; nunatak

2016 Feldenkrais; gesellschaft

2019 auslaut; erysipelas; bougainvillea; aiguillette; pendeloque; palama; cernuous; odylic

And here's the list of every winning word since 1925:

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