How to spell precaution

hear itpre·cau·tion/prɪ'kɔʃən/nounPrefixes and work

What it means: A measure taken to prevent harm.

In a sentence: Always wear a helmet as a precaution when riding your bike.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as percaution or precation.

Same family: caution, cautious, cautiously, precautionary, warning. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: “Precaution” comes from Latin *praecautio*, from *prae-* meaning “before” and *cavere* meaning “to be on one’s guard.” So the word literally means “to be careful before something happens.”

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

Try spelling it

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