How to spell prophecy

hear itproph·e·cy/'prɑfɪsi/nounAcademic

What it means: A prediction about the future.

In a sentence: The wise old owl made a prophecy about the coming of spring.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as prophesy or profecy.

Same family: prophesy, prophet, prophetic, prediction, foretell. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: “Prophecy” comes from Old French and Latin forms of a Greek word meaning “the gift of interpreting the will of the gods.” In modern English, many people confuse the noun “prophecy” with the verb “prophesy,” which sound similar but are spelled differently.

Patterns it uses: The unstressed vowel (schwa)

Try spelling it

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Words like this

prophesy · mathematics · maneuver · campus · characterization · ignorance · disastrous · cinema

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