# Why do so many people spell alcohol as "Alchohol"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 28, 2007, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-spell-alcohol-as-alchohol/394065 "2007-02-28T19:43:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-spell-alcohol-as-alchohol/394065/1 "2007-02-28T19:43:37Z")
I’ve noted a fair number of threads here lately, using the term _alchohol_ to describe the intoxicating substance ethanol, more commonly known as alcohol. I’ve seen this spelling repeated in the same post, indicating it was no mere typo. Going to Google, I find 1.12 million hits for _alchohol_, including many bona fide websites devoted to disseminating information about alcohol and alcohol abuse. (_Alcohol_ has 139 million google hits.) Here at our SDMB, I find 474 threads containing this spelling, while uncovering 750 threads using the word _alcohol_". My online dictionary does not recognize the term _alchohol_. Is there some sub-population where this is the accepted spelling? The _CHO_ part of it is a generally recognized reference to hydrated carbon. Any actual factual answers forthcoming? ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-spell-alcohol-as-alchohol/394065/2 "2007-02-28T19:52:15Z")
[QUOTE=Qadgop the Mercotan] Is there some sub-population where this is the accepted spelling? The _CHO_ part of it is a generally recognized reference to hydrated carbon. [/QUOTE] Well, when I see CHO in a structure, I assume aldehyde. But I must say, if I consistently misspelled alcohol, I wouldn’t hear the end of it. Of course, I cheat by just using the -ol suffix as much as possible. ---
**Author:** ![Miss\_Purl\_McKnittington](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9a140/32.png) [@Miss\_Purl\_McKnittington](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Purl_McKnittington)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-spell-alcohol-as-alchohol/394065/3 "2007-02-28T19:54:03Z")
I imagine it has something to do with knowing that there’s an _h_ somewhere in there, maybe more than one, and that _ch_ is sometimes pronounced as a hard _c_ sound, as in _choral_. Phonetics isn’t always the safest bet for spelling in English. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-spell-alcohol-as-alchohol/394065/4 "2007-02-28T19:56:34Z")
I think it is simply because “ch” is such a common combination in English. “Alcohol” being derived from Arabic does not have the form of a normal English word. Therefore the tendency is to make it “look” more English by putting the “h” next to the “c.” I don’t think it has anything to do with chemistry. The same thing happens in my last name, which is of German derivation. It ends in “hr”, which is ananthema to English speakers. Instead people misspell it by putting the “h” next to a “g” to make the nice English combination “gh”. Such misspellings happen in Spanish too: people rearrange the spelling of foreign names so they make more sense in that language. For example, Spanish speakers often misspell “John” as “Jhon”. While neither “hn” or “jh” are normal combinations in Spanish, the latter is somewhat less weird because many words end in “on.” ---
**Author:** ![Autolycus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@Autolycus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Autolycus)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-spell-alcohol-as-alchohol/394065/5 "2007-02-28T20:13:38Z")
Alchohol is how you spell it after you’ve ingested too much of said happy-juice. Factual answer? I’m stumped like you. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-spell-alcohol-as-alchohol/394065/6 "2007-02-28T20:24:23Z")
I don’t know, but I bet I was at least one of the results of your search. It’s just a brain fart, like how I always want sentence to have an a in it, or amount to have two m’s. Things have gotten much better with my posts since Firefox integrated the spellcheck, lemme tell you. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-spell-alcohol-as-alchohol/394065/7 "2007-02-28T20:42:29Z")
Once again, Colibri wins the thread. Words that are “odd” are commonly mispelled. Like misspelled, for instance. And “h” is a letter that suffers a lot of shuffling. So we have things like Ghandi and Gandhi and Ghandhi, and heck, maybe even Ganhdi. People know there’s a “h” somewhere, but aren’t exactly sure where or how many. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-spell-alcohol-as-alchohol/394065/8 "2007-02-28T20:46:28Z")
nevermind ---
**Author:** ![Hampshire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hampshire/32/4887_2.png) [@Hampshire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hampshire)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-spell-alcohol-as-alchohol/394065/9 "2007-02-28T20:51:04Z")
Okay, okay, so I started a thread today with “alchohol” in the title. Guilty as charged. No, it’s not my accepted form of spelling, it’s just an example of my poor spelling. ---
**Author:** ![vetbridge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b5e925/32.png) [@vetbridge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vetbridge)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-spell-alcohol-as-alchohol/394065/10 "2007-02-28T20:52:05Z")
[QUOTE=Lemur866] Words that are “odd” are commonly mispelled. [/QUOTE] That’s why I prefer the simpler liker. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-spell-alcohol-as-alchohol/394065/11 "2007-02-28T21:05:56Z")
[QUOTE=Lemur866] Once again, Colibri wins the thread. [/QUOTE] Have you been keeping score? What are the rankings? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Antinor01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecae2f/32.png) [@Antinor01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antinor01)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-spell-alcohol-as-alchohol/394065/12 "2007-02-28T21:13:41Z")
[QUOTE=Miss Purl McKnittington] I imagine it has something to do with knowing that there’s an _h_ somewhere in there, maybe more than one, and that _ch_ is sometimes pronounced as a hard _c_ sound, as in _choral_. Phonetics isn’t always the safest bet for spelling in English. [/QUOTE] That’s me right there. I invariably have to type out alcohol at least twice before I hit the right spelling. I know there is an H in there somewhere, but for whatever reason put it in the wrong spot the first time through. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-spell-alcohol-as-alchohol/394065/13 "2007-02-28T21:21:11Z")
It should be pointed out that we would not have the word “alcohol” in our vocabulary if not for the toil of medieval alchemists. It first referred to any sublimed substance or spirit, and ethanol (aqua vita) just happened to be the single most common solvent used. The “al-” prefix in both “alcohol” and “alchemy” is borrowed from the arabic definite article. The words are just transliterated inconsistently. It’s perfectly natural that many people should revert to the much more familiar form of “alchemy.” 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-spell-alcohol-as-alchohol/394065/14 "2007-02-28T21:27:31Z")
Probably the #1 reason is that they (those who use the misspelling) never learned to spell it correctly. But I’ll guess that a close #2 is the consumption of too much alc(h)ohol. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![ratatoskK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ratatoskk/32/2987_2.png) [@ratatoskK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ratatoskK)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-spell-alcohol-as-alchohol/394065/15 "2007-02-28T23:00:06Z")
I am one of those who tends to spell it with a “ch”, and I don’t know why, and generally I’m a good speller. Somehow it just looks better with a “ch”. How many words have a “coho” string in them? It looks strange that way, like Esperanto or something, although I know it’s correct. ---
**Author:** ![Adoptamom\_II](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7ba0ec/32.png) [@Adoptamom\_II](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Adoptamom_II)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2007, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-spell-alcohol-as-alchohol/394065/16 "2007-03-01T00:20:53Z")
And then there are those of us folks who are spelling impaired ☹ Back when I was in school I was an excellent speller. In my early professional career, before word processing programs, I was still pretty accurate. Once I discovered the spell check feature, and 98% of my work is done on a computer, my brain instantly went into “we can dump this spelling database” mode and decided to dedicate the newly freed space to contemplation of the wonders of belly button lint 😃 It makes no difference how often I wish the spelling database could be re-loaded … that memory bank has been erased! and odds are, because this is a spelling thread, I will make a lot of errors! ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2007, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-spell-alcohol-as-alchohol/394065/17 "2007-03-01T01:43:29Z")
How about all the people who think Weird Al’s last name is “Yankovich”? ---
**Author:** ![Mbossa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@Mbossa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mbossa)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2007, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-spell-alcohol-as-alchohol/394065/18 "2007-03-01T02:23:56Z")
[QUOTE=Qadgop the Mercotan] Here at our SDMB, I find 474 threads containing this spelling, while uncovering 750 threads using the word _alcohol_". [/QUOTE] Before anyone starts using these figures to claim something ludicrous like “OMG!! 38.725% of dopers don’t know how to spell alcohalchohaholol!!”, they should consider these points: [ul] [li]A single thread can only appear once in a search. So if “alcohol” is mentioned several billion times in a thread, but “alchohol” appears just once, that thread only counts as one hit for each search.[/li][li]750 seems to be the maximum number of threads returned in a single search. If you do these searches now, you’ll find 475 threads with “alchohol” (now including this one), but still only 750 “alcohol” threads.[/li][/ul] This time I’ll resist the urge to greet a gemstone… ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2007, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-spell-alcohol-as-alchohol/394065/19 "2007-03-01T02:39:49Z")
Thanks for confirming my suspicions that it was a mis-spelling rather than an alternative spelling! ---
**Author:** ![WarmNPrickly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d78d45/32.png) [@WarmNPrickly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WarmNPrickly)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2007, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-spell-alcohol-as-alchohol/394065/20 "2007-03-01T02:49:27Z")
I’m one of the ones that at least used to (knock on wood) spell it that way all the time. I am a chemist so eventually I think this got drilled out of me. On the other hand, I am spelling impaired and if corrected I would most likely raise my middle finger at you. Science is for me, english is for you other people. CHO is the standard abreviation for an aldehyde. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-spell-alcohol-as-alchohol/394065.md?page=2)