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That’s “spelling” the noun, not a verb.

And here I thought `"spelling" the noun` was a reference to either Tori or Aaron

apparently no one here watches TV

The verb form is where the atypical usage originates, so I think it's fair to focus on the verb as the point of interest despite including an example that happens to be a gerund.

Anyway, I think there's an even larger set that "spell" is a member of: metaphorical usage to highlight anything unwanted or erroneous; "code smell" is another.

It's wrong, therefore it smells. It's wrong, therefore it's misspelled. It's wrong, therefore it wants to be different (personification metaphor).

True, but to be fair it's the gerund formed from the verb.

I think that usage is a little bit more common eg., I believe I've seen it in Perl docs, and in rare StackOverflow answers.

I’ve heard this before, e.g. Go’s “while” loop is spelled “for”

Yeah I have as well, I think it's both to be cute and to signify that they're equivalent."'IN GROUP' is an obsolete version of 'IN ROLE'" might mean that it was a subset of the latter with different behavior.