How to spell extension

hear itex·ten·sion/ɪk'stɛnʃən/nounSilent and tricky

What it means: An extra part added to make something bigger.

In a sentence: We added an extension to the treehouse to make it bigger.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as extention or extentionn.

Same family: extended, extending, extensive, extensionally, extent. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: Extension comes from Latin "extensio," from "extendere," meaning "to stretch out." In modern logic and linguistics, its technical sense—"the set of things a word refers to"—is like the word stretching out to cover all the items it names.

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

persuasion · division · decision · admission · permission · collision · tension · explosion

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.