Forums » Smalltalk » Words that you just can't seem to spell right?

So am I the only one with a few words that no matter how often I look up the correct spelling, I always seem to butcher them the next time I try to use them.

For me, I have two such words, immediately and definitely. I always, without fail, botch them every time I use them, especially with the former. So anyone else have any problem words of their own?

Ah yes. ... two pet words of mine that like tripping me up are ’amateur’ and ’bureau’. For some reason I always try to throw an ‘e’ in after the ‘am’ on that first word, and always want to throw an ‘e’ in after the ‘b’ on the second word. These days of autocorrect typing will sometimes catch the mistake in amateur, but it never can figure out the word for bureau.

interesting that there's a running theme with there being two words... here are mine:
attach (or variants thereof) - I can never remember how many ts there are or where they go
flirtatious - I always write flirtateous instead.

Seriously and definitietly were the previous ones for me. Now it's words like inquiries. I don't know why but it bothers me ahaha I can never figure out either if I should write humor or humour, what is the right thing to do haha.

The word “necessary” can go crawl into a bonfire. I can never remember how to spell it off the top of my head.

“Amateur” is another tough one for me, but I think I’ve been using it enough lately that I’m starting to get it.

Anything with double letters. Unless it's really obvious or crazy common, I suck at remembering if a letter needs to be doubled or not. Thank heccing goodness for spell check. @v@

Also "bureaucracy," though I made a mnemonic for that which helps. It was the mess of vowels near the start that tripped me up, but now I usually remember that it's "u" and then french water.

Edit: Also liscence. ....Lisence. Lisense. Liscense? License????? Okay, finally got it. I get it wrong *EVERY* time. >v<

For some unfathomable reason, I have struggled to spell ‘occasionally’ correct for years. I have no explanation—otherwise, I’m a pretty decent speller! Thank goodness for autocorrect...

“Definitely”. Still get a kick out of the fact that it beat “brachistochrone” for me. Literally redid it five times before getting it right, nailed the second word on the first go.

It might be muscle memory from having to type up short blurbs for torchships, but still.


Edit: Huh, looks like this is a common one. English be weird.

Pseudo. Psuedo.

Niave. Naieve.

There are a few others, but my phone's autocorrect is saving me presently!

Several words in English, and a few of them are already mentioned here.

Also quite a few in my native language, but the worst of it being that I always misspell the organisation I work for. It's not that I can't spell it, I just always hit the wrong keys, so I have to double and triple check my spelling. I send quite a few official letters, so it'd be super embarrassing if I send out one where I can't even spell the organization's name correctly...

The word that comes to my mind is 'presence'. For some reason I always want to swap the 's' and the 'c' and then on my phone, my autocorrect will exchange the word to 'pretense'

Also I used to have trouble with 'definite' also, always wanting to change that last 'i' to an 'a' which for some reason felt more appropriate. One day it dawned on me (not sure how I wasn't aware of it already, but....) that within the word 'definite,' is the word 'finite,' and once I was able to reliably remember that, the spelling issues solved themselves.

For me it's neccassary or 'necessary' as it's actually spelled.
Why is the word so long? How many s's and c's are there supposed to be? Was there an e or an a in it? Or both of them? And in which order do they appear? I seem to have endless questions when I have to spell nacessary .

Occasionally.


I always want to put an extra 's' in there.

omg immediately kills me every time

Supercastrophibricsuperalidocious

Preeeeeety sure I spelled that wrong.

If I spelt it right I'll dance naked in the snow. Not that I have snow here.

Renaissance - I tend to put the 'i' after the 2nd 's' instead of in front of the 1st 's'.

recently it's been 'significant' that I spell wrong. not because I don't know how to spell it, but because I always just.. miss or misplace a letter. 'signifiant', 'signifcant', 'signiffant' ahoy.

I consistently have to recheck to see if I've spelled "restaurant" correctly. Or "maintenance."

No idea why I struggle with those. 🤣

Edit: I forgot to include "medieval." Lol

necessary, all the variations of it. I can never for the life of me spell it correctly.

Lol I always spell originally like:
Origionally. And I don’t know why ;-;