- Be honest — would you have been able to immediately spell all these words?
We all misspell a word or make a typo every now and then. Yet, some words are just begging to be butchered in creative ways over and over and over again.
And although thinking so might make us feel smart, it’s not (always) because people are stupid. At its core, English is a weird mishmash of influences from old varieties of English, French, and dozens of other languages.
As such, some words just seem designed to trip people up. Here are X of the most commonly misspelled words in English (ordered alphabetically) curated from various dictionaries and search engine rankings.
1. A Lot
Most common misspellings: alot
Technically, we’re starting this all wrong right off the bat, because “a lot” is two words. Yet, people constantly spell it wrong as one word, according to the Oxford Dictionary. The mistake is most likely due to how saying “a lot” quickly kind of sounds like it’s a single word.
2. Beautiful
Most common misspellings: beutiful, beautyful, beautifull
“Beautiful” is one of the most commonly misspelled words in Google searches in America, according to the search engine itself. It’s due to the modern English word’s roots in French. The French love to tack on silent vowels in their words that only end up tripping us when trying to spell them in English.
3. Bureaucracy
Most common misspellings: buraecracy, burocracy, bureaucrazy
“Bureaucracy” suffers from the same problem as “beautiful.” It’s weird series of vowels is just difficult to render, especially if you rarely use this word. That puts it on the Oxford list of the most common misspellings.
4. Conscience
Most common misspellings: conscious
“Conscience” is on the Oxford list, and it’s mostly due to the influence of two other words. First, “conscience” has “science” in it, but it’s pronounced completely differently. Second, we have the word “conscious” which sound very, very similar and tends to throw people off.
5. Fulfill
Most common misspellings: fulfil
Some people tend to spell “fulfill” with a single L at the end, and they’d be perfectly right to do so if they lived in the U.K. In America, however, the word gets that one extra letter tacked on. It tricks people, because American English generally tends to favor shorter spellings — except here.
6. Led
Most common misspellings: lead
If you’ve ever worked with resumes, you’ve seen this mistake repeatedly. The past tense of the word “lead” is “led.” The mistake is probably due to the word “read,” which is spelled the same in all tenses.
7. License
Most common misspellings: lisence, licence
English is a cruel language in the sense that it can switch a letter’s pronunciation seemingly arbitrarily. C, for instance, is pronounced as “s” — sometimes. “License” is one of those words that gets misspelled because of this linguistic feature.
8. Miscellaneous
Most common misspellings: misellaneus, miscellanius, and so on
“Miscellaneous” is among the most difficult words in the Merriam-Webster dictionary’s Spell It quiz game. And it’s not hard to see why, with its double-L and the French-incluenced “eou” sequence. No wonder people usually shorten it to “misc.”
9. Occurrence
Most common misspellings: ocurrence, occurance, occurrance
“Miscellaneous” was cruel, but “occurrence” may just be the most sadistic word in English. It’s a perfect, horrible mix of double consonants and the “-ence” ending that, when spoken out loud, sounds like “-ance.” This word truly earns its place on the Oxford misspellings list.
10. Separate
Most common misspellings: seperate
“Separate” is another one of those words that falls victim to how English is pronounced. When you say it, it kind of does sound like “seperate,” doesn’t it? Unfortunately, that’s just not how it’s spelled.
11. Supersede
Most common misspellings: supercede
Let’s face it—outside of very specific professions, you will not use the word “supersede” too many times in your life. As such, it’s understandable that it ended up on the Oxford misspelling list. Like with “license,” a lot of people mess up with the weird C/S distinction rules in English.
12. Tomorrow
Most common misspellings: tommorow, tomorow
“Tomorrow” is among the most common misspelled words in Google searches. This is another case of the word’s pronunciation making it tough to know where to add that double consonant. People tend to extend the M or drop the second R, partially depending on their native dialect.
13. Unnecessary
Most common misspellings: unnesessary, uneccessary, unnecessery
Just look at this mess. “Unnecessary” has it all—the double consonant, the C/S confusion, and the “-ary” ending that sounds like “-ery” in regular speech. What an unnecessarily complicated spelling.
14. Until
Most common misspellings: untill
Many people want to add an extra L to “until.” Unlike with “fulfill,” however, that’s wrong in every variety of English. The confusion stems partly from people shortening “until” to “till” in casual writing.
15. Which
Most common misspellings: witch, wich
Which witch ate the sandwich? “Which,” “witch,” and “-wich” are homonyms — words that are pronounced exactly the same despite their different spellings. Although they also mean different things, they get mixed so often that “which” found itself on the Oxford list.