Spelling.School · How to spell

How to spell elicit

hear ite·lic·it/ɪ'lɪsɪt/verbHidden vowels

What it means: To call forth responses or feelings.

In a sentence: The teacher tried to elicit answers from the students by asking interesting questions.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as illicit or elicite.

Sounds like, but is not: illicit. Same sound, different spelling and meaning.

Same family: elicits, elicited, eliciting, evoke, draw-out. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: “Elicit” comes from the Latin verb *elicere*, meaning “to draw out” or “entice,” formed from *e-* (“out”) and *licere* (“to entice”). It is often confused with “illicit,” which looks similar but means “illegal” and comes from a different Latin root.

Patterns it uses: The unstressed vowel (schwa)

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