How to spell zealous

hear itzeal·ous/'zɛləs/adjectiveRules and real life

What it means: Showing great enthusiasm or passion.

In a sentence: The zealous puppy wagged its tail excitedly when it saw its owner.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as zelous or zealos.

Same family: zeal, zealously, zealot, zealotry, enthusiastic. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: “Zealous” comes from the Medieval Latin word “zelosus,” meaning “full of zeal,” which itself goes back to the Greek “zēlos,” a word for passionate desire or rivalry. In older religious writing, being “zealous” was often praised as a strong, devoted kind of faith.

Patterns it uses: The unstressed vowel (schwa)

Try spelling it

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