We’ve assembled a list of some of the most commonly misspelled English words.

Do you have some tricky-to-spell words you think we should add to our list? Let us know here!

Not a new word, but having read the etymology of bellwether, I doff my cap to the predecessor of the mouse that belled the cat !

I love your replies….clever and funny

Maybe I am a bit anal on spelling, but a word I see misspelled often is “lose.” It is almost always spelled “loose,” as in gravel or bowels. I suppose this is the problem with spelling checkers…

So you can tell a good hangman by the size of his nose ?

Here are some suggestions (incorrect spelling in brackets):

counterfeit (counterfit)
Portuguese (Portugese)
restaurateur (restauranteur)

Does ‘incommunicado’ count as a misspelling?  In Spanish the word has only one ‘m’.

douglang - 01 December 2008 11:59 AM

So you can tell a good hangman by the size of his nose ?

Or a grateful Christian when the Romans let the lions lose?

Hi Vikki,

Thanks for the list. It should be useful. Do you have any idea why spelling is getting worse? Among French-speaking circles, it is blamed on the fact that schools don’t have dictations (“dictées)” anymore. But dictations have never really been a big part of anglophone education. Yet the same phenomenon is present there.

My theory is that people just don’t read and write as much.  You see a word;  you get a picture of it; when you wish to write the same word, the picture comes back to you and you reproduce it.

Another theory is more sociological. Spelling is like dressing. You can be “dressed” even if you’re carelessly dressed. People don’t really care anymore. Why worry about spelling as long as people can read what you wrote?  Doing things “properly” is not cool.

Verbum

To say nothing of “texting” and the abbreviated text-speak used: u for you,  4 for for, wat   for what., etc.