How to spell description

hear itde·scrip·tion/dɪ'skrɪpʃən/nounRules and real life

What it means: A written representation of something.

In a sentence: The book gave a great description of the magical land.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as discription or descrption.

Same family: describing, described, descriptional, descriptive. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: “Description” comes from Latin ‘descriptio’, from ‘describere’, meaning ‘to write down’ or ‘to copy off’. It’s closely related to the word ‘script’, reminding us that descriptions were originally something written rather than spoken.

Patterns it uses: The unstressed vowel (schwa)

Try spelling it

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