# Words that always seem spelled wrong **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 19, 2011, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-that-always-seem-spelled-wrong/589572 "2011-07-19T13:06:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![YaraMateo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/58f4c7/32.png) [@YaraMateo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YaraMateo)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-that-always-seem-spelled-wrong/589572/61 "2011-07-22T06:29:00Z")
> [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](#): > > I always have to be careful around ‘elevator’. > > **Also the ‘Philippines’.** > mmm This and Croatia. The first time someone wrote that done I was all thinking to myself there’s a country called “Crotch-ia”? :o When really, that shows how dumb I can be. If it was said the way it’s spelled it would probably be Crow-Te-Ah. I can’t be believe Croatia is spelled that way. I just don’t hear a T in there. Nirvana. It always seems wrong, but it’s not. Bologna. Gross meat and word. I’m sure there’s more, but this sprung to my mind. ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-that-always-seem-spelled-wrong/589572/62 "2011-07-23T00:23:53Z")
diarrhea I always get those r’s and that h all screwed up and misplaced. ---
**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-that-always-seem-spelled-wrong/589572/63 "2011-07-23T00:54:06Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > Worshiped. Whenever I type that word, I instinctively add in an extra P, and then delete it when I see the squiggly red line. Say what now? If someone were to ask me to spell the past tense of “worship,” I’d spell it with two Ps without a thought, and I’d believe I’d be correct. I ran off to [answers.com](http://answers.com), and apparently that spelling is perfectly acceptable. > [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](#): > > Also the ‘Philippines’. > > mmm A teacher once told me to think of it as my good friend Philip Pines. I’ve never forgotten it, and have since never had to second guess my spelling of Philippines. > [@It\_s\_Not\_Rocket\_Surgery](#): > > Supersede. > > It was years (and the use of spell check) before I realized it needed that second “s” rather than a “c”. Not only does this one also give me pause, I was once so certain that it was spelled “supercede” that I got all riled up that a place I used to work at had misspelled the word consistently in its documents, only to discover I was the one who didn’t know how to spell. When I looked it up in to double check my sense of outrage, I found I was plain wrong and was truly taken aback. In my mind, “supersede” was spelled with a “c” end of story. But my large ass company has misspelled and/or typo’d things before, so I comforted my wrongness by reminding myself of all the other times I caught errors and was right. But still. SuperSede? Seriously? ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-that-always-seem-spelled-wrong/589572/64 "2011-07-23T00:57:53Z")
> [@MeanOldLady](#): > > Say what now? If someone were to ask me to spell the past tense of “worship,” I’d spell it with two Ps without a thought, and I’d believe I’d be correct. I ran off to [answers.com](http://answers.com), and apparently that spelling is perfectly acceptable. > > A teacher once told me to think of it as my good friend Philip Pines. I’ve never forgotten it, and have since never had to second guess my spelling of Philippines. > > Not only does this one also give me pause, I was once so certain that it was spelled “supercede” that I got all riled up that a place I used to work at had misspelled the word consistently in its documents, only to discover I was the one who didn’t know how to spell. When I looked it up in to double check my sense of outrage, I found I was plain wrong and was truly taken aback. In my mind, “supersede” was spelled with a “c” end of story. > > But my large ass company has misspelled and/or typo’d things before, so I comforted my wrongness by reminding myself of all the other times I caught errors and was right. But still. SuperSede? Seriously? > **[Redirect Notice](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CCsQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thefreedictionary.com%2Fsupercede&ei=QRwqTuDAKsbl0QGjvdXUCg&usg=AFQjCNFpbaa8qBFt9ZvcvERd16sraE9_WA)** It seems that both spelling of superc(s)ede are accepted. ---
**Author:** ![RadicalPi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/radicalpi/32/9806_2.png) [@RadicalPi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RadicalPi)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-that-always-seem-spelled-wrong/589572/65 "2011-07-23T01:03:18Z")
Well, according to this site ([http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/misspelled.html](http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/misspelled.html)), the hundred most commonly misspelled words are: acceptable, accidentally, accommodate, acquire, acquit, a lot, amateur, apparent, argument, atheist, believe, bellwether, calendar, category, cemetery, changeable, collectible, column, committed, conscience, conscientious, conscious, consensus, daiquiri, definite(ly), discipline, drunkenness, dumbbell, embarrass(ment), equipment, exhilarate, exceed, existence, experience, fiery, foreign, gauge, grateful, guarantee, harass, height, hierarchy, humorous, ignorance, immediate, independent, indispensable, inoculate, intelligence, its/it’s, jewelry, judgment, kernel, leisure, liaison, library, license, lightning, maintenance, maneuver, medieval, memento, millennium, miniature, minuscule, mischievous, misspell, neighbor, noticeable, occasionally, occurrence, pastime, perseverance, personnel, playwright, possession, precede, principal/principle, privilege, pronunciation, publicly, questionnaire, receive/receipt, recommend, referred, reference, relevant, restaurant, rhyme, rhythm, schedule, separate, sergeant, supersede, their/they’re/there, threshold, twelfth, tyranny, until, vacuum, weather, and weird. I don’t know how they came up with this list, but there you go. Some of them on the list, I can recall many people getting wrong, especially judgment, its, and millennium. Of course, this is American English. As for me, I cannot spell individual or privilege for the life of me. Both of those have about twenty alternative spellings in my auto-correct list, so they almost never appear wrong. I also have some issues with -ent versus -ant, especially since so many of them differ between my to languages, English and French, such as _independence_ versus _independence_, so I can’t use my general approach of deciding which of several spellings looks more familiar. ---
**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-that-always-seem-spelled-wrong/589572/66 "2011-07-23T01:11:22Z")
> [@jamiemcgarry](#): > > [Redirect Notice](http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CCsQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thefreedictionary.com%2Fsupercede&ei=QRwqTuDAKsbl0QGjvdXUCg&usg=AFQjCNFpbaa8qBFt9ZvcvERd16sraE9_WA) > > It seems that both spelling of superc(s)ede are accepted. Yeah, but apparently “supercede” is a common usage problem. Now that I’m here, I realize I never answered the question, which I meant to but then forgot. “Feud” and “fuel” always kill me. To me, outside of the last letter, the two are pronounced exactly the same, so why aren’t they spelled accordingly?! In my mind, “fuel” should be spelled “feul.” And then sometimes “feud,” which is spelled right in my mind, will screw me up because I’ll start asking myself how “fuel” is spelled and then get all needlessly confused. I truly hate these words. In my universe, they’d both have the “e” before “u” and I would be pleased as punch about that. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-that-always-seem-spelled-wrong/589572/67 "2011-07-23T01:12:38Z")
[QUOTE=RadicalPi;14054070 As for me, I cannot spell individual or privilege for the life of me. Both of those have about twenty alternative spellings in my auto-correct list, so they almost never appear wrong. I also have some issues with -ent versus -ant, especially since so many of them differ between my to languages, English and French, such as _independence_ versus _independence_, so I can’t use my general approach of deciding which of several spellings looks more familiar.[/QUOTE] You spelled _independence_ twice. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![RadicalPi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/radicalpi/32/9806_2.png) [@RadicalPi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RadicalPi)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-that-always-seem-spelled-wrong/589572/68 "2011-07-23T01:13:34Z")
> [@Shakester](#): > > It _is_ wrong, everywhere except the US. All those words that Americans end with -ize are correctly spelled -ise in all other versions of English. This is one of the quirks of the Oxford English Dictionary, but they almost disdain -ise to almost the degree generally reserved for Hitler. (I thus godwinize this thread.) I don’t think you can say that -ize is wrong in British English, since if I am not mistaken there are a number of influential publishers, not least of which is Oxford themselves, that use it. It is true that it is less common to use -ize in the United Kingdom or most places outside English-speaking North America. I don’t know about Australia. In any case, I just wanted to point out that -ize/-ise is a bit of a bone of contention, spellingwise, and I don’t think you can claim that -ize is just flat out wrong outside of North America. [QUOTE=Oxford English Dictionary] **-ise, -ize** In modern French the suffix has become -iser, alike in words from Greek, as baptiser, évangéliser, organiser, and those formed after them from Latin, as civiliser, cicatriser, humaniser. Hence, some have used the spelling -ise in English, as in French, for all these words, and some prefer -ise in words formed in French or English from Latin elements, retaining -ize for those formed from Greek elements. **But the suffix itself, whatever the element to which it is added, is in its origin the Greek -ιζειν, Latin -izāre; and, as the pronunciation is also with z, there is no reason why in English the special French spelling should be followed, in opposition to that which is at once etymological and phonetic.** In this Dictionary the termination is uniformly written -ize. [/QUOTE] Bolding mine. ---
**Author:** ![RadicalPi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/radicalpi/32/9806_2.png) [@RadicalPi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RadicalPi)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-that-always-seem-spelled-wrong/589572/69 "2011-07-23T01:17:10Z")
> [@runner pat](#): > > You spelled _independence_ twice. 😃 And now we see auto-correct mess me up. Damn. Damn. Damn. I meant of course, English _independ **e** nce_ versus French _indépend **a** nce_. ---
**Author:** ![chiroptera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df705f/32.png) [@chiroptera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chiroptera)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-that-always-seem-spelled-wrong/589572/70 "2011-07-23T01:33:37Z")
Ceiling. I always think of _ciel_ (French for sky) and it throws me off. ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-that-always-seem-spelled-wrong/589572/71 "2011-07-23T01:39:50Z")
Rhythm. Did I even spell that right? I honestly feel I didn’t. It seems wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Locrian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/locrian/32/14146_2.png) [@Locrian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Locrian)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-that-always-seem-spelled-wrong/589572/72 "2011-07-23T01:42:52Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > Judgment. Why isn’t there an ‘e’ in the middle? EXACTLY!! That bugs the shit out of me. I pronounce it “jud-guh-ment”. If that’s correct, why does “judge” have an e? Don’t judg me. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![etv78](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d78d45/32.png) [@etv78](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/etv78)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-that-always-seem-spelled-wrong/589572/73 "2011-07-23T02:09:13Z")
> [@Locrian](#): > > EXACTLY!! That bugs the shit out of me. I pronounce it “jud-guh-ment”. > > If that’s correct, why does “judge” have an e? > > Don’t judg me. 😃 In American English, you usually drop a silent “e” when adding a suffix. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-that-always-seem-spelled-wrong/589572.md?page=3)