Spelling.School · How to spell

How to spell fluorine

hear itflu·o·rine/'fluə,rin/nounSchwa and roots

What it means: A chemical element that is a toxic gas.

In a sentence: Fluorine is a gas that helps keep our teeth strong.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as flourine or florine.

Same family: fluorine-18, fluoride, fluoridation, fluorite, fluorocarbon. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: The word 'fluorine' comes from the Latin 'fluere,' meaning 'to flow,' because the mineral fluorite was used as a flux to help ores melt and flow more easily in metalworking. The element itself was not isolated until 1886 because its extreme reactivity made it notoriously dangerous to work with.

Patterns it uses: The unstressed vowel (schwa)

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