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How to spell differentiation

Differentiation is spelled D-I-F-F-E-R-E-N-T-I-A-T-I-O-N. The part people get wrong: double F.

hear itdif·fer·en·ti·a·tion/dɪfɝr,ɛnʃi'eɪʃʌn/nounAcademic

What it means: The act of seeing how things are not the same.

In a sentence: Differentiation helps us understand how things are different from each other.

The part people get wrong

Watch for double f, and an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear.

Same family: different, difference, differentiate, differential, differently. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: “Differentiation” comes from the Latin verb *differre*, meaning “to carry apart” or “to differ,” combined with the suffix *-tion* that turns actions into nouns. In calculus and biology, the word kept this idea of “separating” or “making distinct” to describe how functions or cells change into something more specific.

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