Commonly misspelled words facts for kids

The term commonly misspelled words refers to words in English that people often spell incorrectly. It's easy to make mistakes when writing! For example, many people write "concensus" instead of the correct "consensus." Other common errors include "equiptment" instead of "equipment," "independant" instead of "independent," or "readible" instead of readable.

Words People Often Misspell

This section shares some words that are often spelled wrong. These examples come from lists of the most commonly misspelled words. It's a good idea to learn these!

• extreme – often misspelled as extreem
• familiar – often misspelled as familier
• fascinating – often misspelled as facinating, fasinating
• fiery – often misspelled as firey
• fluorescent – often misspelled as flourescent
• foreign – often misspelled as foriegn
• forty – often misspelled as fourty
• friend – often misspelled as freind
• government – often misspelled as goverment
• grammar – often misspelled as grammer
• grateful – often misspelled as gratefull, greatful
• guarantee – often misspelled as garantee, garentee
• height – often misspelled as heighth, heigth
• humorous – often misspelled as humerous
• hygiene – often misspelled as hygene, hygine

More Tricky Words

• immediately – often misspelled as imediately
• independent – often misspelled as independant
• indispensable – often misspelled as indispensible
• intelligence – often misspelled as inteligence, intelligance
• interesting – often misspelled as intresting
• irrelevant – often misspelled as irrelevent
• island – often misspelled as iland
• jewelry (UK: jewellery) – often misspelled as jewelery
• judgment – sometimes misspelled as judgement (especially in the U.S.)
• knowledge – often misspelled as knowlege

Even More Tricky Words

• laboratory – often misspelled as labratory
• leisure – often misspelled as liesure
• library – often misspelled as libary, liberry
• license – often misspelled as lisence (US always license, UK noun licence)
• lose – often misspelled as loose
• losing – often misspelled as loosing, loseing
• maintenance – often misspelled as maintenence, maintnance
• medieval – often misspelled as medeval, medevil, mideval
• millennium – often misspelled as millenium, milennium
• miniature – often misspelled as miniture
• mischievous – often misspelled as mischevous, mischevious
• misspell – often misspelled as mispell, misspel
• mysterious – often misspelled as misterius, misterious
• necessary – often misspelled as neccessary, necessery
• niece – often misspelled as neice
• occasion – often misspelled as occassion
• occasionally – often misspelled as occasionaly, occassionally
• occurrence – often misspelled as occurrance, occurence
• original – often misspelled as orignal
• outrageous – often misspelled as outragous

And More Tricky Words

• paid – often misspelled as payed
• parallel – often misspelled as parrallel, parellel
• parliament – often misspelled as parliment
• particularly – often misspelled as particurly
• pastime – often misspelled as passtime, pasttime
• perceive – often misspelled as percieve
• perform – often misspelled as preform
• possession – often misspelled as posession, possesion
• potatoes – often misspelled as potatos
• precede – often misspelled as preceed
• prejudice – often misspelled as predjudice
• privilege – often misspelled as privelege, priviledge
• probably – often misspelled as probly
• professional – often misspelled as proffesional
• pronunciation – often misspelled as pronounciation
• psychology – often misspelled as psycology
• publicly – often misspelled as publically
• quantity – often misspelled as quanity
• questionnaire – often misspelled as questionaire, questionnair

Almost Done with Tricky Words

• readable – often misspelled as readible
• receive – often misspelled as recieve
• receipt – often misspelled as reciept
• recognize – often misspelled as reconize, reckonize
• recommend – often misspelled as recomend, reccommend
• referred – often misspelled as refered
• reference – often misspelled as referance, refrence
• relevant – often misspelled as relevent, revelant
• restaurant – often misspelled as restarant
• rhythm – often misspelled as rythm, rythem
• ridiculous – often misspelled as rediculous, ridicolous
• sacrifice – often misspelled as sacrefice
• scissors – often misspelled as sissors
• secretary – often misspelled as secratary, secretery
• seize – often misspelled as sieze
• separate – often misspelled as seperate
• sergeant – often misspelled as sargent
• similar – often misspelled as similer, simmilar
• sincerely – often misspelled as sinceerly
• succeed – often misspelled as succede
• successful – often misspelled as succesful, successfull
• supersede – often misspelled as supercede
• surprise – often misspelled as suprise, surprize

Last of the Tricky Words

• temperature – often misspelled as temperture
• temporary – often misspelled as temprary
• their – often confused with they're
• through – often misspelled as thru
• tomorrow – often misspelled as tommorrow
• tongue – often misspelled as tounge
• truly – often misspelled as truely, trully
• twelfth – often misspelled as twelth
• until – often misspelled as untill
• unusual – often misspelled as unuseual
• usable – often misspelled as usible
• using – often misspelled as useing
• usually – often misspelled as usualy
• vacuum – often misspelled as vaccuum, vacume
• vegetarian – often misspelled as vegatarian
• vehicle – often misspelled as vehical
• vicious – often misspelled as visious
• village – often misspelled as villege
• weather – often confused with wether
• weird – often misspelled as wierd
• whether – often confused with wether
• writing – often misspelled as writting, writeing

Why Do We Misspell Words?

There are several reasons why people make spelling mistakes.

Saying Words Wrong

Sometimes, we misspell words because we say them incorrectly, or we don't say all the sounds clearly. For example, if you say "libary" instead of "library," you might write it that way too. This is called Mispronunciation.

Typing Mistakes

Many spelling errors happen because of simple typing mistakes.

• Sometimes letters are typed twice or three times, like "careeer" instead of "career."
• Other times, letters are missed, like "betwen" instead of "between."
• Keys can also be pressed in the wrong order, so "because" might become "becuase."

Words From Other Languages

A word that is misspelled in English might actually be spelled correctly in another language! For example, the English word "address" is spelled "adress" (with one "d") in German. Also, someone who speaks Spanish might write "inmigrate" instead of "immigrate."

• "100 Most Often Misspelled Words in English", LoveToKnow, Corp., December 2008, webpage: YDict.
• "Canadian, British and American Spelling", LukeMastin.com, December 2008, webpage: LM-spelling.
• "Canadian, British and American Spelling: Some Commonly Misspelled Words", LukeMastin.com, December 2008, webpage: LM-misspelled.
• "Merriam-Webster Online" (results for misspelling as "concensus"), Merriam-Webster, 2008, webpage: MW-concensus.
• "200 Most Commonly Misspelled Words (Part 1)", Richard Nordquist, About.com, December 2008, webpage: Aboutcom-misspelled-A.
• "200 Most Commonly Misspelled Words (Part 2)", Richard Nordquist, About.com, December 2008, webpage: Aboutcom-misspelled-B .
• "200 Most Commonly Misspelled Words (Part 3)", Richard Nordquist, About.com, December 2008, webpage: Aboutcom-misspelled-C.

• "100 Most Often Misspelled Words in English", LoveToKnow, Corp., December 2008, webpage: YDict-100.