Do you constantly write gauge as ‘guage’? Or would you have difficulty explaining what an omphalos is?
They are the sort of challenges which face the competitors in Scripps National Spelling Bee competition. They're required to spell tremendously difficult words, or guess their meaning. To give you a taste of the competition, we’ve selected eight words that are either tricky to spell or whose meaning is obscure for our own spelling quiz. How well can you do?
And before you begin - an omphalos? It’s the very heart (or hub) of something.
Why do we keep misspelling these words?
Find out what spelling can reveal about the evolution of English.
Five words that have changed their meaning
Why we used to call serious people 'silly' - and other language curiosities.
The pedantic punctuation quiz. quiz
You've tested your spelling, now it's time for your punctuation.
