How to spell medicine

hear itmed·i·cine/'mɛdɪsən/nounSilent and tricky

What it means: A substance used to treat illness or pain.

In a sentence: When I have a cold, I take medicine to help me feel better.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as medecine or medisine.

Same family: medicinal, medicate, medication, medical, medic. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: Medicine comes from Latin "medicina," meaning the art of healing, from "mederi," to heal. The verb use "to medicine" is older and more literary, and is now much less common than the noun.

Patterns it uses: The unstressed vowel (schwa)

Try spelling it

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