Word for Wednesday: Beautiful

blog home

Our Word for Wednesday theme for 2023 is tricky spelling words. This year, after sharing the definition and etymology of each week’s word, we will end every blog post with some tips and tricks to help you spell it.

In February, we looked at the words receive, necessary, separate, and extremely. Our first tricky spelling word for March is beautiful.

If something is beautiful, it means it is pleasing to the eye or delightful to the senses. The word is also used to describe prefect weather conditions. 

Here is beautiful used in some example sentences:

  • My new dress is a beautiful shade of green.
  • The sound of beautiful music filled the air. 
  • It was a beautiful day and we went to the beach. 

Beautiful dates to the mid-fifteenth century and made from the word beauty plus the suffix -ful.  

Beauty dates to the early-fourteenth century and comes from the word ‘bealte’ meaning ‘physical attractiveness’ or ‘goodness’. The word entered English via Anglo-French, Old French, and Vulgar Latin, and ultimately comes from the Latin ‘bellus’ meaning ‘handsome’ or ‘charming’. 

The word beautiful is an example of changing the letter ‘y’ to an ‘i’ when adding a suffix. Learn more words like this in Spellzone Unit 9. Suffixes: why we need to double letters, change them, or drop 'e'.

A trick to remember how to spell the first part of this word is say the following to yourself: Beautiful Elephants Aren’t Ugly.


01 Mar 2023
blog home

"Thank goodness for Spellzone during this remote learning phase. The site is easy for students to navigate independently and they're really enjoying the activities and spelling games. You get an awful lot for your money with Spellzone. Really reassuring is the very prompt response with helpdesk queries. I've very rarely needed the helpdesk, but when I have, the issue has been addressed and sorted within a very short time."

Sarah Taggart, Oasis Academy Lord's Hill