How to spell allergic

hear ital·ler·gic/ə'lɜrdʒɪk/adjectiveSchwa and roots

What it means: Having a strong reaction to a substance.

In a sentence: Molly is allergic to peanuts, so she cannot eat them.

The part people get wrong

Watch for double l, and an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as alergic or alleric.

Same family: allergies, allergenic, allergist, hypoallergenic. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: Allergic and allergy both come from Greek roots meaning “other work” (allos ‘other’ + ergon ‘work’), originally used in medicine to describe an unusual reaction of the body; over time, it narrowed to mean the kind of immune overreaction we now call an allergy.

Patterns it uses: The unstressed vowel (schwa)

Try spelling it

You will hear the word and a sentence. Type it and press Enter. Then four more words from the same level, so you know where you stand.

Words like this

eligible · legible · geologist · religious · digestible · intelligence · beneficiary · verification

Spelling.School is a spaced-repetition spelling practice: ten minutes a day, every word spoken aloud, every miss explained, and every word coming back just before you would forget it. Try five words without signing up.