How well do you know the English language? The Oxford English Corpus tracks and records written language as it is used in real situations. Of the 2 billion words of real English, the following 40 are among the most frequently misspelled. Misspelt. Whatever.
The table below lists 40 English spelling mistakes that are frequently made online. We’ve included the correct spelling of the word and the common misspelling — but just to mess with you, three are in the wrong order. See if you can spot them (without cheating) and tell us in the comments!
Correct spelling | Common misspelling |
---|---|
accommodate | accomodate |
achieve | acheive |
apparently | apparantly |
argument | arguement |
assassination | assasination |
beginning | begining |
calendar | calender |
chauffeur | chauffer | coming | comming |
committee | commitee |
curiosity | curiousity |
definitely | definately |
disappear | dissapear |
disappoint | dissapoint |
embarrass | embarass |
existence | existance |
fluorescent | florescent |
foreign | foriegn |
foreseeable | forseeable |
gist | jist |
humorous | humourous |
incidentally | incidently |
independent | independant |
irresistible | irresistable |
lollipop | lollypop |
necessary | neccessary |
occasion | ocassion |
pavillion | pavilion |
publically | publicly |
receive | recieve |
seperate | separate |
siege | seige |
supersede | supercede |
tattoo | tatoo |
tendency | tendancy |
tomorrow | tommorow |
tongue | tounge |
truly | truely |
unforeseen | unforseen |
weird | wierd |
wherever | whereever |
[Via Oxford Dictionaries]
Comments
10 responses to “How Many Of These 40 Common English Mistakes Can You Spell Correctly?”
I believe supercede is an optional variant.
Going by my experience as a lexicon compiler, it’s probably listed as such by Merriam-Webster, who allow pretty much anything.
Publically and publicly are in the wrong columns! Even clicking on the Oxford Dictionaries link provided shows that publicly is the correct spelling and publically is the incorrect one.
And similarly with separate and seperate. Separate is correct. Seperate is incorrect.
Are you sure you’ve got publicly / publically and separate / seperate in the right columns?
All of ’em. Probably because I don’t come from America.
How many commentators didn’t read the whole article?
I was thinking exactly the same thing.
Effect in cases where it should be affect.
Ben Gilbraith, you have to be sure, do not ‘believe’ yourself to be right.
Supercede, recede, concede.
You may see that supersede is spelled in that way, learn the original method and stick with it.
Many people who speak correct English have had more than enough of Yank-Speak, changing English words to suit themselves, blimey, a cheque is a promissory note, a check is to look and see if the kids are safe.
Snow is pronounced snooohw, how can a plough be a plow sounding as plaaaaw.
Try moccasin against mocassin, sphygmomometer against sphygmomanometer, bananna against banana, ad infinitum.
‘Separate’, which you list as incorrect, is in fact the correct spelling. ‘Seperate’ is definitely incorrect.