Use the free Spelling Quiz below to quiz yourself, then get an instant score, or browse all 55 curated words.
Discover our list of hard words to spell and master the trickiest words so that you can write flawlessly. As writers today, we have the advantage of spellcheck. But it’s still frustrating when you keep getting the red squiggly line under your attempts to spell a word. Knowing how to spell the words in this list correctly will lessen frustration, expedite your writing process, and b
Study each word, hide it, then type it from memory. Switch to spelling-bee mode to hear each word and type it blind. See your score at the end.
Word 1 of 55 · Score 0
accommodate
Study the spelling, then hide it and type it from memory.
Hard-to-spell words are rarely hard at random: almost every one hides a double letter, a silent letter, a foreign borrowing, or a suffix that breaks the usual pattern. Once you know why a word trips people up, you can attach a memory hook to that exact trap instead of rote-drilling the whole word. The groups below sort notorious misspellings by the specific difficulty they contain.
These words are missed because writers drop one of a doubled pair or double the wrong letter, as in accommodate, which needs both a double c and a double m.
These words contain letters you cannot hear when the word is spoken, so the ear gives the hand no help at all.
These words keep the spelling conventions of the language English took them from, so Greek gives ch the k sound and French leaves whole syllables unwritten.
These words go wrong at the ending, where -ally, -lly, and the sci letter cluster defy the way the word sounds.
These words combine letters in sequences that look wrong even when they are right, which makes writers second-guess a correct attempt.
These base words are hard on their own, and adding an ending or a possessive raises fresh doubling and apostrophe questions.
Sparklines show each word's usage in published books since 1800 (Google Books Ngram data). The dot marks the peak decade.
Tap any word to see it used in a sentence.
The cabin can accommodate six guests if two of them like bunk beds.
A red balloon drifted over the fence and lodged in the oak tree.
He roasts broccoli with garlic until the edges char.
She coolly returned the insult with a smile and a raised eyebrow.
The alarm sign works purely by deterrence; the system was never installed.
One degree of difference in the oven ruined the meringue.
The morning fog began to dissipate as the sun cleared the ridge.
He keeps a dumbbell under his desk for breaks between meetings.
She was too embarrassed to admit she had never seen the film.
Finally, after three delays, the flight boarded.
The workshop failed to fulfill even the modest promises in its brochure.
The trail is generally quiet on weekday mornings.
The harassed waiter juggled five tables and a broken espresso machine.
Magically, the stain vanished after one wash, or so the ad claimed.
The bridge was built to last a millennium, according to its optimistic engineers.
The banner misspelled the guest of honor's name in letters two feet tall.
Bring only what is necessary; the porters charge by the kilo.
They save the good china for occasions that never seem to arrive.
Power cuts were a weekly occurrence in the old apartment.
The new road runs parallel to the railway for ten miles.
All personnel must sign in at the front desk after hours.
The winning goal came from their first possession of the second half.
Occasionally a seal pops its head up near the harbor wall.
The questionnaire took forty minutes and asked her favorite color twice.
The sheriff's badge sat on the dashboard of the parked cruiser.
The bake sale was such a success that they ran out of cake by ten.
The final ascent to the summit took three hours in thin air.
The kitchen descended into chaos when both ovens failed at once.
The candidate's charisma carried a speech that said very little.
The choreography looked effortless, which meant it was anything but.
A cloud of cologne announced him before the elevator doors opened.
Critics were quick to condemn the sequel, and quicker to watch it.
His conscience nagged him all the way home until he turned back to pay.
She was conscious of every eye in the room as she stood to speak.
The garden reached its florescent peak in the first week of May.
The envelope carried a foreign stamp none of us recognized.
He offered her a pressed handkerchief with old-fashioned courtesy.
Fresh herbs from the windowsill rescued an otherwise plain soup.
Keep the receipt in case the jacket does not fit.
The salmon leaped the weir on its third attempt.
A lone silhouette stood at the end of the pier at dusk.
The ceremony ended with a solemn minute of silence.
The inspector was thorough, checking even the attic crawl space.
The book club meets every second Wednesday above the bakery.
The stern mentor with a hidden soft side is a beloved archetype.
The camaraderie of the night shift made the long hours bearable.
It was disingenuous of the landlord to call the leak a minor issue.
Gold is malleable enough to be hammered into sheets thinner than paper.
His answer was tangential at best, and the panel noticed.
A zephyr off the lake stirred the curtains without cooling the room.
Embarrass a proud chef by asking for ketchup and you will wait a long time for dessert.
The Sheriff posted notices at both ends of the valley.
Harass the referee and you will watch the rest of the match from the parking lot.
Misspell a client's name in the proposal and no one will remember the rest of it.
The Occasion called for a better bottle than the one he brought.
Words that combine several traps at once top most lists: accommodate stacks two double letters, conscience hides an unexpected sci, millennium doubles both the l and the n, and Wednesday buries a silent d. Borrowings like silhouette, camaraderie, and choreography are hard because they follow French or Greek spelling habits rather than English ones. If a word makes you hesitate, it almost certainly contains one of those patterns.
English absorbed vocabulary from Latin, French, Greek, and Germanic languages while keeping each source's spelling habits, so one sound can be written many ways. Pronunciation also drifted over the centuries while spelling froze, which is how silent letters in words like solemn and receipt survived. The result is a spelling system where the ear is an unreliable guide.
Target the trap, not the whole word. For accommodate, remember it is large enough to accommodate two c's and two m's; for conscience, spot the word science hiding inside it. Writing a troublesome word out by hand a few times in a real sentence fixes it far better than staring at a list, and keeping a personal log of your own repeat offenders tells you exactly where to spend effort.
The correct form is misspell, with a double s. The prefix mis- attaches to the base word spell, and both keep their letters, so the s from mis- and the s from spell sit side by side. Misspell itself is one of the most commonly misspelled words in English, which writers tend to find either comforting or cruel.
Looking for another word bank or tool? Browse every writing tool →
One practical writing tip, a new tool, and a fresh contest deadline, every Thursday. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.