Spelling.School · How to spell

How to spell cereal

What it means: Food made from starchy grains, often eaten for breakfast.

In a sentence: I ate a big bowl of cereal for breakfast. ▶

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as serial or cerial.

Sounds like, but is not: serial. Same sound, different spelling and meaning.

Same family: cereal grain, breakfast cereal, whole-grain cereal, cereal crop. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: The word "cereal" comes from Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture and grain. Over time, it came to mean both the grain plants themselves and the breakfast foods made from them.

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.

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