More than 280 regional champions competed on Wednesday in the in two preliminary rounds of the 2015 Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The 49 who survived the initial exams now await word on who will move on to the finals, scheduled to air at 8 p.m. Thursday on ESPN, the USA Today Network reported.

The competition's semifinals also required the competitors, who ranged in age from 9 to 14 and were dressed "in everything from Sunday-best dresses and suits to super-casual Friday shorts and T-shirts," to spell terms such as vexillology (the study of flags), amphictyony (a league of ancient Greek states), and bergschrund (a crevasse), the Washington Post detailed.

In the preliminary rounds, many of the youngsters used their time on stage to joke around with pronouncer Jacques Bailly, who won the bee in 1980 and is "a celebrity to many contestants," according to USA Today.

"Before I start spelling, I just want my mom to take a deep breath for a moment," Mitchell Robson quipped before he correctly spelled "Pythagorean" (the adjective in a theorem related to the geometry of triangles).

Joshua Mason, meanwhile, wondered if he could "buy a vowel" when he was asked to spell "quaquaversal," which means "going off in all directions at once towards a center."

The boldest attempt, meanwhile, came from Gerardo Amaro, who inquired about the origin and definition of "hypsometry" (the measurement of land elevation relative to sea level) to then ask Bailly, "How do you spell it?"

A little celebrity among the spellers is 13-year-old Vanya Shivashankar, the only current contestant who has been in five different bees. The sister of 2009 champion Kavya finished 13th last year and fifth in 2013, according to Hollywood Take.

"The way we prepare is we understand the roots of the words. And we make our own lists," the sisters' father, Mirle Shivashankar, told the Kansas City Star. "We do not memorize the letters. It's not memorizations of letters unless it's a unique word. We try to understand clues behind words, such as word derivatives. There's no secret to it," he added.

Click here to tune in to ESPN's livestream of tonight's final.