It doesn’t matter that you haven’t been in school for about 30 years — many people (okay, most people) still can’t spell certain words correctly.
In fact, what do an extraordinary number of people with genius-level IQs have in common with people who have no more than a sixth-grade education? The answer: There are one or more words that they just can never seem to spell right.
The inability to spell certain words correctly is not limited by intelligence or gender… and every single person we asked admitted to at least a couple of words they have to think hard about how to spell.
The top 150 most commonly misspelled words?
Here’s our list of the 150 most commonly misspelled words.
We created this list by evaluating more than 600 commonly mispelled words — generated from our own observations as well as from various other sources, including information from Purdue University, Kent State University and Oxford University.
- absence
- accommodate
- achieve
- acquaintance
- acquire
- across
- address
- advertise
- advice
- alright
- among
- apparent
- arctic
- argument
- assistant
- athlete
- attempt
- awful
- balance
- basically
- because
- becoming
- before
- beginning
- believe
- benefited
- besides
- between
- breathe
- brilliant
- bureau
- business
- calendar
- careful
- category
- ceiling
- cemetery
- certain
- chief
- coming
- commitment
- competition
- conscience
- conscious
- convenience
- coolly
- criticize
- curiosity
- definitely
- deposit
- describe
- desperate
- develop
- difference
- dilemma
- disappear
- disappoint
- discipline
- embarrass
- equipped
- escape
- exaggerate
- excellent
- except
- exercise
- exhilarated
- existence
- expect
- experience
- explanation
- familiar
- fascinating
- fiery
- finally
- foreign
- forty
- friend
- frightening
- gauge
- genealogy
- gorgeous
- grammar
- guarantee
- harass
- height
- incidentally
- independent
- inoculate
- insistent
- irresistible
- jewelry
- length
- liaison
- license
- lightning
- loneliness
- lose
- maintenance
- mathematics
- millennium
- mischievous
- misspell
- nauseous
- nickel
- niece
- ninety
- noticeable
- nuclear
- occasional
- occurrence
- peculiar
- perseverance
- persistent
- possession
- predictable
- prejudice
- prescription
- privilege
- probably
- pronunciation
- pursue
- quantity
- questionnaire
- receipt
- received
- recognize
- recommend
- restaurant
- rhythm
- sandwich
- seize
- separate
- sergeant
- sincerely
- stilettos
- strength
- submit
- surprise
- temperament
- their
- thorough
- through
- tragedy
- truly
- twelfth
- until
- vehicle
- vogue
- weird
- which
A little spelling history
Early in the twentieth century, industrialist Andrew Carnegie decided to “fix” the way Americans spelled some things, and created the “Simplified Spelling Board.” In 1906, the Board published a list of 300 words that needed updating in order to make the language ready for the progress of humankind.
Ten spelling revisions included checker, fantasy, gram, hiccup, license, omelet, parlor, theater, whisky and woolen.
Among the words that never seemed to work: addrest, dropt, fantom, gazel, lookt, mixt, rime, stopt, tapt, thoroly, thru, washt, wisht, and wrapt.
