MANCHESTER – Chloe Conway had barely uttered the “s” in “e-x-i-g-u-o-u-s” when her big sister gasped.

“Oh my God!” Alexandra Conway uttered softly, tears quickly forming in her eyes.

Neither Chloe, standing at a microphone on stage in the University of New Hampshire at Manchester auditorium, nor Alexandra, sitting in the last row, needed to hear the moderator say that the Hillside Middle School seventh-grader had nailed the word and won the competition.

Both knew instantly – in fact, before Chloe even started to spell the word.

Emotion was anything but exiguous – the adjective means “excessively scanty” – at the 58th annual New Hampshire Spelling Bee co-sponsored by the Elks USA and Granite State College, and presented by the New Hampshire Union Leader newspaper.

Proud parents hugged their children. After each child faltered and was eliminated, he left the stage to rousing congratulatory applause from the 100-plus people in attendance.

Sixteen students from elementary, middle and junior high schools across the state competed. Two who qualified missed the bee, one due to illness, the other was traveling with his family abroad.

Nashua was represented by Nisha Devasia, a sixth-grader at Fairgrounds Middle School, and by Sithara Sunil, a fifth-grader at Infant Jesus School.

Alexandra Conway, now a senior at Manchester Central High School, finished second in the bee in grades 5, 6 and 7. As an eighth-grader, she went to the National Spelling Bee, where she finished 60th in a field of 268 young spellers.

Now, her sister, Chloe, will be traveling to Washington, D.C., in June to compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. She also won a championship trophy and, among other prizes.

“For her to go in the seventh grade, I am so happy for her,” an increasingly tearful Alexandra Conway said.

The runner-up, Isabelle Halle of Portsmouth Middle School, was knocked out by the word “jadeite,” omitting the first “e.” Most of the students similarly were eliminated by missing one letter in the words they were asked to spell.

On her way to victory, Chloe Conway also correctly spelled worrisome, gazpacho (the cold, tomato-based soup nearly tripped up her up in just the second round), cringle, trattoria, bobadil, languid, acetone, spurious, carapace and harrumph.

After the competition, which went to 11 rounds, Chloe Conway admitted she recognized the winning word, as she did nearly every word she was asked to spell.

Conway attributed her spelling acumen partly to being an avid reader. She can read a book in a day, and now does so on a Kindle, she said.

Sithara Sunil stood on stage holding her trophy for competing in the bee while her father, Nambiar Sunil, snapped photos.

Sithara had the dubious duty of going first in each round. She correctly spelled admiral, autobahn, musicale and escargot before being knocked out by bhalu – a type of bear.

“I was really scared,” Sithara said of competing in the bee, though she didn’t appear to be any more nervous than the other expert spellers she shared the stage with. “The hardest part was when I had to spell words I didn’t know. I was really scared.”

She prepared by practicing from a list of words friends sent her and by being quizzed by her mother.

Her father admitted to not being a strong speller.

A native of India, he learned the British spelling and pronunciation of words when he first learned English and had to look up American pronunciations online, Nambia Sunil said.

Nisha Devasia nailed the words pragmatic, ampere, azure, recalcitrant, melange and potable before being tripped up by jocosity.

Standing in the auditorium with her parents Cyriac and Julie Devasia, Nisha said the key to her being a great speller is, “I like to read.”

Patrick Meighan can be reached at 594-6518 or pmeighan@nashuatelegraph.com.