Back in grade school, words like "onomatopoeia" and "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" seemed insanely complicated and long. Surprisingly, neither of these is the ...

English, whatever its merits as a language, is a bitch to spell. There are so many rules, and so many exceptions, and yet in the end you have to learn a lot of words on a case-by-case basis. If future ...

'Believe', 'separate' and 'surprise' are some of the most commonly used words in the English language yet they are commonly misspelt. Why is that? What's so difficult about spelling English words that ...

This post is in partnership with History Today. The article below was originally published at HistoryToday.com. Note: Usually, History Today posts appear on TIME.com with American spellings. For this ...

Henry is the author of Enough Is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell Detroit News, December 1906. Roosevelt sits stunned in a boxing ring after losing his match with the ...

Some of the brightest young minds just finished showcasing their knowledge of the English language. The 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee wrapped up this week with participants navigating words the ...

The English language is filled with confusing and hard-to-spell words. If you’ve had to think twice or consult a dictionary or Google before writing a certain word, you’re not alone. We consulted ...

One of the best things going on around 200 B.C.E. (from this linguist’s point of view, at least) was that a librarian in Alexandria, Aristophanes of Byzantium, invented the first punctuation system ...

The nation is not letter perfect. Americans may be embarassed, even. Make that “embarrassed” - it’s among the common words that vex the spell-challenged in an age of spell check. According to a study ...

English is a quirky, often confusing language that's been shaped and influenced by many others. As such, it has a massive variety of words—but here are some we think rise above the crowd and deserve ...