How to spell environment

hear iten·vi·ron·ment/ɛn'vaɪrənmənt/nounSilent and tricky

What it means: The natural world of land, water, air, and living things.

In a sentence: We need to take care of the environment by planting trees and recycling.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as enviroment or enviornment.

Same family: environmental, environmentalist, environ, environmentally, surroundings. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: Environment comes from the French word “environner,” meaning “to surround.” The modern sense of “the natural world” became especially common in the 20th century as people began to focus more on pollution and conservation.

Patterns it uses: The unstressed vowel (schwa)

Try spelling it

You will hear the word and a sentence. Type it and press Enter. Then four more words from the same level, so you know where you stand.

Words like this

department · psalm · moisten · balance · account · object · everyone · gnaw

Spelling.School is a spaced-repetition spelling practice: ten minutes a day, every word spoken aloud, every miss explained, and every word coming back just before you would forget it. Try five words without signing up.