The /əbəl/ suffix is one of the most confusing for spelling bee participants. In the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary, there are a whopping 2,900 words that end in -ible, -able, or -eable! Out of these, there are around 1,150 that every speller should know – or at least be able to guess correctly. While the majority…
Category: Suffixes
French Suffixes: é vs. ée
One of the most difficult sounds in the French language is the long a sound \ā\, pronounced like the “ay” in “may”. There are many ways to spell it, including -ait, -et, and more. Two especially difficult suffixes to differentiate between that make this sound are é and ée. In French, -é is the masculine past participle. You…
Words of Champions 2021-22 Part 2
-ise vs -ize Let’s take a look at all the ‘-ise’ and ‘-ize’ words in the Words of Champions list. As a general rule, “-ize” is two times more common than the “-ize” ending where the syllable is pronounced as “eyes”. So if in doubt, guess “-ize”. However, there are a bunch of interesting pronunciations…
Words of Champions 2021-22 Part 1
In this post, we look at some commonly mispronounced syllables and explain rules to spell them correctly. -ous vs -us words Both endings are pronounced the same way (as the last syllable in “marvelous”). The rule here is: adjectives usually go “-ous”, and nouns usually go “-us”. So ask for part of speech before deciding…
Latin words ending in /-əsəl/
How do you spell /ˈärˌbəsəl/, a word from Latin that means: “a dwarf tree or shrub”? If you guessed “arbustle”, I don’t blame you. There are plenty of common English words that end with “-ustle” (bustle, hustle, rustle…). Note that none of those words have passed through Latin. However, arbuscle comes from the Latin root…