How to spell pill

hear itpill/pɪl/nounStarter

What it means: A small round dose of medicine.

In a sentence: The doctor gave me a little pill to make me feel better.

The part people get wrong

Watch for double l. Often misspelled as pil or pilll.

Same family: pills, the pill, birth-control pill, contraceptive, medication. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: The word “pill” comes from Middle Dutch and Latin words meaning a small ball or pellet of medicine. The phrase “the pill” became a common way to refer to oral contraceptives after they were introduced in the 1960s.

Try spelling it

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