Hardest common words for you to spell

[Greg Bernhardt]

There are some words even though not really difficult often require me to spell check in Google. For me it's "maintenance", "ecstasy", "conscience", "entrepreneur", "unnecessary".

 

[opus]

Similar! I always write as "similiar". Ridiculous!

 

[phinds]

I have a lot of trouble with hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia (fear of long words)

 

[PeroK]

What about "miniscule"?

 

[PeroK]

There are some words even though not really difficult often require me to spell check in Google. For me it's "maintenance", "ecstasy", "conscience", "entrepreneur", "unnecessary".

I have, perhaps unnecessary, mnemonics for two of those:

con-science: against science!

unnecessary: two "s"hips in one "c".

I also use "relevant elephant" to remember the former.

 

[fresh_42]

As a non English speaker, I have different difficulties. It happens more often that I confuse two words, rather than forget how to spell them. I'll buy @PeroK's ships: good advice, or was it advise? I have difficulties to remember the difference. And for some reason I can't figure out, I confuse choose and chose. What really annoys me, is the fact, that since I started to write more English texts, I began to make the standard mistakes and write (right) words as I hear (here) them. That's horrible, the more as I never haven't made them before. Strange.

 

[BillTre]

Bureaucratic and related words (too many vowels in the middle to make any conceivable sense!).
Words with ie or ei.
I used to have a real problem with protein (not: "i" before "e") which was bad for a biologist.

 

[PeroK]

Bureaucratic and related words (too many vowels in the middle to make any conceivable sense!).
Words with ie or ei.
I used to have a real problem with protein (not: "i" before "e") which was bad for a biologist.

"i" before "e", but not after "c"; but, only when the sound is "ee" (not in beige, foreign, weigh etc.); and, not when it's a chemical (protein, lutein etc.); and, not when it's "weird"!

 

[gmax137]

I used to write "develope" for "develop." All the time. I still do when writing by hand. Typing, not so much.

 

[Mark44]

What about "miniscule"?

Not so hard if you consider that "minute" (as an adjective) and "minuscule" (correct spelling of the above) are synonymous.

 

[DrGreg]

Not so hard if you consider that "minute" (as an adjective) and "minuscule" (correct spelling of the above) are synonymous.

As a result of reading this, I did a Google search for "miniscule", and it seems there are lots of sites saying that "miniscule" was historically incorrect, but now it's in such widespread use that it has become accepted.

 

[Stephen Tashi]

"diarrhea", "hemorrhage" (hopefully words I don't have to look up very often).

 

[PeroK]

"diarrhea", "hemorrhage" (hopefully words I don't have to look up very often).

That would be "diarrhoea" and "haemorrhage" to me - even worse!

 

[Stephen Tashi]

That would be "diarrhoea" and "haemorrhage" to me - even worse!

Which reminds me - one feature of my all-Linux based computers is that some spell-checks use USA spellings and other's use UK spellings. (I'm too lazy to learn how to configure them.) According to the UK spell-checks, I can't spell :"aluminum" or "neighbor".

 

[Jonathan Scott]

I sometimes write "priviledge" for "privilege" and it took me a long time to get "supersede" right every time (it derives from Latin "super" = above + "sedere" = to sit). Apart from that, my spelling is mostly extremely reliable, although as I work in the UK for a US company, I sometimes have problems knowing which side of the pond to assume when writing internal documentation.

 

[Fig Neutron]

One word I thought I had finally gotten straight until I started to write it here is restaurant. It's an easy word, but I always mix up the au and the single a.

 

[fresh_42]

I sometimes write "priviledge" for "privilege" ...

Just happened to me today: ... Stonehendge ... <wait, looks weird> ... Stonehenge ... <oh, even the spell checker knows Stonehenge> ...

 

[DrGreg]

One word I thought I had finally gotten straight until I started to write it here is restaurant. It's an easy word, but I always mix up the au and the single a.

I remember a comedy sketch from decades ago where somebody claimed that a restaurant (rest|a|ur|ant) was a place where you could rest

(a) your aunt
(b) your uncle
(c) ...
​

And then they speculated that it could have been called a restburuncle.

 

[cobalt124]

That would be "diarrhoea" and "haemorrhage" to me - even worse!

Easy to spell for Care Workers. I have difficulty separating "separate" and "seperate".

 

[hmmm27]

dilemna. I maintain that it's not "dilemma".

di+lemma translates as "two choices", which is fine until you realize the usage is "difficult choice", or "don't want to choose".

di+limnj - "two lagoons" - could easily be corrupted over the centuries into "dilemna".

Just sayin'. Carry on.

 

[CWatters]

Scissors

 

[Klystron]

Fiziks.

 

[pinball1970]

"diarrhea", "hemorrhage" (hopefully words I don't have to look up very often).

I sometimes write "priviledge" for "privilege" and it took me a long time to get "supersede" right every time (it derives from Latin "super" = above + "sedere" = to sit). Apart from that, my spelling is mostly extremely reliable, although as I work in the UK for a US company, I sometimes have problems knowing which side of the pond to assume when writing internal documentation.

Colour color neighbour neighbour

Center centre...As well as some of the medical terms , haematology vs hematology already pointed out

I was criticised a lot as kid for poor spelling and found technical words easier than non-technical.

Necessarily similarly and embarrassing were annoying words.

Today I can get Fluorescence wrong sometimes and vacuum never looked right to me as a kid, mind you neither did Aardvark.

 

[Auto-Didact]

Enstrophy, nonlinear vs non-linear, symplectomorphism

 

[Klystron]

Most of the previously mentioned words especially restaurant. Seems as if the letter "a"s go wither they wish.

 

[Jonathan Scott]

Need to remember that "homogenous" is usually a mistake, and is definitely not the same word as "homogeneous".

 

[Auto-Didact]

Occurring, that double rr always gets me

 

[Jonathan Scott]

The words "focused" or "focusing" always make me hesitate, but they are correct. Although "focussed" looks plausible and is apparently used as well, it is incorrectly formed.

 

[SamRoss]

Anything with a double-letter such as "cinnamon" (the automatic spell check just fixed this for me), "tomorrow", and "parallel". I always seem to forget which letter is the double one.

 

[SamRoss]

di+limnj - "two lagoons" - could easily be corrupted over the centuries into "dilemna".

I have a similar word history theory. The word "want" used to be used to describe something that was lacking, as in "going hungry from want of food". Now to "want" something is to desire it. Apparently, people desired whatever they didn't have and the word for not having it came to be understood as desiring it. This is my "proof" that people are greedy.

 

[TeethWhitener]

The single t in 'benefited,' the absence of an e in 'judgment' but the presence of one in 'acknowledgment.' 'Millennium' always gives me problems with the double n.

"i" before "e", but not after "c"; but, only when the sound is "ee"

Now you're just bieng ridiculous.

 

[marcusl]

Proceed, precede, succeed, secede. And naphtha.

 

[sysprog]

As a non English speaker, I have different difficulties. It happens more often that I confuse two words, rather than forget how to spell them. I'll buy @PeroK's ships: good advice, or was it advise? I have difficulties to remember the difference. And for some reason I can't figure out, I confuse choose and chose. What really annoys me, is the fact, that since I started to write more English texts, I began to make the standard mistakes and write (right) words as I hear (here) them. That's horrible, the more as I never haven't made them before. Strange.

The word 'advise' is a verb; 'advice', a noun -- 'choose' is present; 'chose' is past.

More confusing orthographically is the difference between 'affect' and 'effect', both of which can be either verb or noun. To affect something is to influence that something, to effect something is to cause that something to occur. An effect is the result of a cause; an affect (pronounced with a short 'a' and a stress on the first syllable) means an apparent peculiarity of demeanor.

From the Review tab in MS Word, you can select spelling and grammar, or select a block of text and hit F7 -- the spell checker won't flag a correctly spelled word that is grammatically incorrect in the sentence, but the grammar checker will often catch such thing as the difference between 'right', 'wright', 'write', and 'rite', or that between 'to', 'too', and 'two' (typically if one of them is used in a way that makes it appear to be possibly mistakenly substituted for one of the others), and it will notice the unusual use of negation in a phrase such as "I never haven't" (which could be taken to mean "I always have"), and it will produce a wavy green underline, and you can investigate further with the F7 dialog.

 

[fresh_42]

The word 'advise' is a verb; 'advice', a noun -- 'choose' is present; 'chose' is past.

I know, or I know where to look it up. For some reason I can't get them into permanent memory; like some people confuse right and left. I think it is because I cannot hear a difference between advise and advice - and yes I know that there is a tiny one - and somehow choose sounds past (passive) and chose sounds present (active) to me, don't ask me why.

 

[fresh_42]

More confusing orthographically is the difference between 'affect' and 'effect', both of which can be either verb or noun.

Especially in the sentence: In effect, he acted in affect.