How to spell department

hear itde·part·ment/dɪ'pɑrtmənt/nounSilent and tricky

What it means: A section of a store that sells a specific kind of item.

In a sentence: The toy department is full of fun things to play with.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as departement or deparment.

Same family: depart, departure, departmental, apartment, division. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: “Department” comes from French départir, meaning “to divide or share out,” plus the noun-forming suffix -ment. Over time, its meaning shifted from a general “division” to a specific section within a government, business, or school.

Patterns it uses: The unstressed vowel (schwa)

Try spelling it

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