ie vs ei
We’ve all heard the rule “i before e except before c”. For spelling, we use an extended form of this rule:
i before e except when:
- There is the soft ‘c’ sound (this includes words like ‘seize’ which don’t actually have ‘c’ in them)
- There is the “ay” sound (like in neighbor, sleigh, eight, etc.)
- For German words, the long “i” sound goes “ei” – like in Einstein (audio) – but the long ‘e’ sound goes “ie”
- Words beginning with the prefix “re-” and followed by a “i” word like “reintroduce” obviously go “ei”.
There are 151 words in Words of Champions 2021-22 that have “ei” or “ie” in them. After applying the rule above, we’re left with about 25 exceptions (list below contains some interesting applications of the rule above):
- albeit (audio)
- aniseikonia (audio)
- caffeine (audio)
- cameist (audio)
- capoeira (audio)
- epideictic (audio)
- heist (audio)
- Holstein (audio)
- jadeite (audio)
- kaleidoscope (audio)
- leisure (audio)
- meiosis (audio)
- nonpareil (audio)
- obeisant (audio)
- oleiculture (audio)
- onomatopoeia (audio)
- Pompeii (audio)
- reveille (audio)
- Seine (audio)
- seismologist (audio)
- shar-pei (audio)
- simultaneity (audio)
- spontaneity (audio)
- trompe l’oeil (audio)
- vermeil (audio)
- weird (audio)