Spelling.School · How to spell

How to spell stationary

hear itsta·tion·ar·y/'steɪʃə,nɛri/adjectiveSchwa and roots

What it means: Staying in one place and not moving.

In a sentence: The bike in the park is stationary and doesn't move.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as stationery or stationarry.

Sounds like, but is not: stationery. Same sound, different spelling and meaning.

Same family: stationery, stationed, stationary-bike, standstill, immobile. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: Stationary comes from the Latin word 'stationarius', meaning 'belonging to a station' or 'standing still'. It is often confused with 'stationery' (with an 'e'), which originally referred to writing materials sold by a 'stationer'—a bookseller who had a fixed stall.

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

Try spelling it

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