How to spell combination

hear itcom·bi·na·tion/,kɑmbə'neɪʃən/nounSilent and tricky

What it means: A mixture formed by joining two or more things.

In a sentence: The combination of red and yellow makes orange.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as combanation or combinition.

Same family: combined, combining, recombine, combinable. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: “Combination” comes from Latin *combinare*, meaning “to join together,” from *com-* (“together”) and *bina* (“two at a time”). Over time it came to mean any joining of parts, which is why we use it today for everything from math problems to lock codes and flavor mixes.

Patterns it uses: The unstressed vowel (schwa) · -tion, -sion or -cian?

Try spelling it

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Words like this

situation · competition · nation · solution · question · relation · direction · addition

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