.The 5 Hardest Words in the English Language to Spell

Janice Tovey
2 min readJan 3, 2022

What words do you think they are?

A picture of a scholarly glasses and a dictionary focusing on the spelling of difficult words in the English language.
Compliments of UpSplash dmitry ratushny

English is listed as the most common language spoken. I think that we can all agree that the complexities in syntax, random pronunciations and difficult grammar rules can make learning and speaking English rather difficult and confusing.

Do you every find that the more you write a word the more difficult it becomes to spell. And the more you think about the word the more you become confused. Sometimes in fact you completely forget how to spell the word.

Here are 5 of the most difficult to spell words in the English language:

#5 Nauseous Too many vowels make this word very difficult to spell. It sounds like there should also be the letter “c” in there somewhere. Even the order of the consonants is confusing. If you can spell this word, congratuations!

#4 Onomatopoeia This means a word that is formed from a sound that is related to what it is defining. For example the word “crash” or “boom.” There are a total of eight vowels and if that isn’t enough, the sound “pia” is made up of 5 letters. Good luck with this word!

#3 Mischievous We pronounce it wrong so we spell it wrong. It has three syllables and not four. This causes us to want to add the letter “i.”

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Janice Tovey

My passion is writing. I also love reading, teaching, animals, nature, music, and humor. I am curious about everything and enjoy writing about all things.