In this weekly post, we bring more useful content from the Macmillan Dictionary to English language learners. In this series of spelling tips we will be looking at some of the most commonly misspelled words in English and suggesting ways to improve your spelling.
A word that is frequently misspelled in searches of Macmillan Dictionary is entrepreneur, which is often mistakenly spelled *enterpreneur.
Entrepreneur is a word of French origin, deriving from the verb ‘entreprendre’ meaning ‘to undertake’. It’s a notoriously tricky word to spell, as you can see from this entertaining video. There just seem to be too many e’s, n’s and r’s in there for one word.
Apart from entrepreneur and its derivatives, there are not many words in English that start with the combination entre- and most of them are also of French origin (like entrée, which is a fancy word for a main course, or entrechat, a type of jump in ballet). Remembering the French origin may help you remember that it’s entre-, not enter-; if not, well entre nous you are in good company
You can find some information on why English spelling is so difficult, as well as helpful tips on mastering it here. You can search for other posts in this series using the tag ‘spelling tips’.
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