Spelling.School · How to spell

How to spell reliable

hear itre·li·a·ble/rɪ'laɪəbəl/adjectiveSchwa and roots

What it means: Able to be trusted and depended on.

In a sentence: The school bus is always reliable and on time.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as realiable or relieable.

Same family: rely, reliably, reliability, reliant, trustworthy. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: Reliable comes from the verb rely plus the suffix -able, meaning 'able to be relied on.' Rely itself comes from Old French 'relier,' meaning 'to bind together,' so a reliable person is someone you can metaphorically be 'tied' to and depend on.

Patterns it uses: -able or -ible? · The unstressed vowel (schwa)

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