Spelling.School · How to spell

How to spell qualify

hear itqual·i·fy/'kwɑlə,faɪ/verbRules and real life

What it means: To meet the necessary standards.

In a sentence: To play in the big race, you must qualify and show you can run fast.

The part people get wrong

Often misspelled as qaulify or qualifiy.

Same family: qualification, qualified, unqualified, qualifying, quality. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: “Qualify” comes from Medieval Latin *qualificare*, meaning “to make of a certain quality or kind.” Over time, English speakers extended the meaning from changing the quality of something to meeting the right conditions for something, like a job or a competition.

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