The hardest words to spell in English

August 14, 2026 · the Playpit blog

Some words are hard to spell because English took them from another language and kept the old spelling. Some are hard because a letter went quiet three hundred years ago and nobody removed it. And some are hard because there are two of a letter where your ear only hears one.

Here are the hardest words to spell, grouped by why they are hard — which is the part that actually helps you remember them.

The double-letter traps

Your ear hears one letter. There are two. Or you expect two and there is one.

The trick for necessary: one collar, two sleeves. One C, two S. It sounds daft and it works forever.

The silent letters

These were pronounced once. The sound went; the letter stayed.

• rhythm — no vowels doing any work at all. Rhythm Helps Your Two Hips Move.
• subtle — silent B
• receipt — silent P, but deceit has no P. There is no reason for this.
• island — silent S, added by mistake in the 1500s by people who thought it came from Latin insula. It did not.
• Wednesday — say it Wed-nes-day in your head and you will never miss it
• February — the first R is real, even though nobody says it
• queue — one letter doing the work and four standing about
• colonel — spelled from Italian, said as if from French. Genuinely indefensible.

The -ceed / -cede / -sede problem

This one has an actual rule, and the rule is short.

• Only three words end in -ceed: proceed, exceed, succeed.
• Only one word ends in -sede: supersede.
• Everything else ends in -cede: precede, recede, concede, intercede, secede.

Learn the three, learn the one, and the rest look after themselves.

The ones that come from other languages

English borrowed these and kept the spelling.

• bureaucracy — French
• entrepreneur — French
• liaison — French, and the second I is the one people drop
• hors d’oeuvres — French, and hopeless
• jalapeño — Spanish
• schadenfreude — German
• connoisseur — French, two N and two S

The pairs that get mixed up

Not hard to spell, exactly. Hard to spell correctly, which is worse, because a spellchecker will not save you.

• their / there / they’re
• its / it’s — it’s is only ever “it is”. Always. No exceptions.
• affect / effect — affect is usually the verb, effect is usually the noun
• complement / compliment — a complement completes something
• stationary / stationery — stationery is envelopes and paper
• principal / principle — the principal is your pal
• desert / dessert — dessert has two S because you always want a second one

The two rules worth knowing

Most spelling advice is a list. These two are actual rules that cover hundreds of words.

I before E, except after C — but only when it rhymes with “bee”. That last part is the bit people leave off, and it is the bit that makes the rule work. Believe, chief, thief, receive, ceiling — all fine. Weight, neighbour, their and height do not rhyme with “bee”, so the rule never applied to them in the first place.

Double the last letter before -ing or -ed when the word ends stressed. Begin → beginning. Refer → referred. But offer → offered, because the stress is at the front.

Practise without a spelling test

The fastest way to get better at spelling is to spend time looking at letters and working out what they can make — which is a word game, not a worksheet.

Anagrove gives everybody the same six letters each day. Five ordinary words to find, then every other word hiding in the same six. There is no timer and no way to lose, so a word you half-know costs you nothing to try.

And if you get stuck on a set of letters anywhere, the anagram solver here will show you every word they make. It is also a quick way to settle an argument about whether something is a word — which, with most of the words on this page, it usually is.