How to spell religious

hear itre·li·gious/rɪ'lɪdʒəs/adjectiveSchwa and roots

What it means: Related to belief in a god or spiritual faith.

In a sentence: Many people go to a religious place to pray on special days.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as religeous or religous.

Same family: religion, religiousness, religiously, religiousness, religiosity. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: Religious comes from the Latin word 'religiosus', meaning ‘pious’ or ‘devout’, which itself is related to 'religio', often translated as ‘religion’ or ‘reverence for the gods’. Over time, English shifted the noun 'religion' into the adjective form 'religious' by adding the common describing ending '-ous'.

Patterns it uses: The unstressed vowel (schwa)

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