Spelling.School · How to spell

How to spell competition

hear itcom·pe·ti·tion/,kɑmpɪ'tɪʃən/nounSilent and tricky

What it means: A contest in which people try to win.

In a sentence: The school held a fun competition to see who could run the fastest.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as competion or competiton.

Same family: competing, competitive, competitor, competitiveness. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: “Competition” comes from the Latin word *competere*, which originally meant “to strive together.” Over time, the idea shifted from simply striving alongside others to trying to win against them.

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

Try spelling it

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