How to spell operation

hear itop·er·a·tion/,ɑpə'reɪʃən/nounSilent and tricky

What it means: A medical procedure involving an incision.

In a sentence: The doctor performed an operation to help the teddy bear feel better.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as opperation or operasion.

Same family: operational, operative, operations, cooperation, operator. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: Operation comes from the Latin word *operatio*, meaning 'a working' or 'an activity,' from *operari* ('to work'). The modern military sense grew from the idea of large, organized 'work' carried out by armed forces.

Patterns it uses: The unstressed vowel (schwa) · -tion, -sion or -cian?

Try spelling it

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Words like this

relation · direction · connection · location · creation · communication · position · collection

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