HARDEST WORDS TO SPELL

English can be a real pest, and even native speakers find themselves stumbling over some stubbornly tricky words. Sometimes they’re difficult to understand, other times they’ve been misused so often that their original meaning has gotten lost. Pronunciation can also be a problem. As a follow up to our article on confusing words, here are some of the most difficult words in English.

“Nauseous,” is a world full of vowels which makes it hard to spell because it can be difficult to remember the order of vowels. Let's say if you’ve got the vowels sorted, there's still a chance that you may be unsure about the consonants. The structure of "Nauseous" revolves around the “sh” sound that makes it sound like there should be a “c” in-between, same as in “conscious.”

NAUSEOUS (adjective) feeling that you are likely to vomit, or causing this feeling: He felt nauseous and dehydrated. unpleasant, nauseous odors feeling as if you might vomit: Example: Roller coasters make me feel nauseous. making you feel as if you might vomit: Example : the nauseous smell of rotting flesh humorous example. The bride's mother was wearing a nauseous (= extremely unattractive) combination of green and yellow.

VOCABULARY Flight sickness Car sickness Sickness Motion sickness

EXAMPLES: 1. Who can smile even when she's nauseous and tell me how happy it makes her just to see me across the room? 2. The thought of coffee, alcohol, red meat all made me nauseous. 3. The two-dozen pills she was taking made her nauseous, she says. 4, He became dizzy, nauseous, and experienced shortness of breath. 5. Some women start feeling nauseous and experience headaches directly after using these hair treatments.

Mischievous Have you also been pronouncing “mis-CHEE-vee-ous” like this? Won't be surprising, if you do. Since we all spell it incorrectly because we pronounce it like that! Since the actual word is “MIS-chi-vous”, and we often mispronounce it, it leads people to spell the word wrongly, as they think there’s an “i” after the “v.” The “i” in “mischievous” is after the “h,” same as in “mischief.” Because of this confusion, it’s one of the hardest English words to spell.

Mischievous American pronunciation Sounds like mis- chuh- vuhs

DILATE With only six letters, “dilate” really shouldn’t be hard to spell, but the way people usually pronounce it can throw spellers for a loop. Many people say “dilate” as three full syllables, “di-a-late,” leading themselves and others to add in an extra “a” while spelling it. But let’s put this easy misunderstanding to rest – there’s no such word as “dilate.”

Definition of dilate : to become enlarged or widened : to become expanded in extent : to comment at length

Synonyms & Antonyms for dilate Synonyms amplify, develop, elaborate (on), enlarge (on or upon), expand, flesh (out) Antonyms abbreviate, abridge, condense, shorten

Examples of dilate in a Sentence 1. The drug causes the blood vessels to dilate. 2. The drug dilates the blood vessels. 3. To send more blood to the skin’s surface, the heart beats faster and blood vessels dilate to accommodate more blood flow.