Aegis

How to spell aegis

5 letters · 2 syllables

18 of the 58 people asked to spell aegis in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

The most common mistake is egis. The letters people get wrong are highlighted.

egis aegis

What people typed instead

• egis7 people
• eges3 people

How to pronounce aegis

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does aegis mean?

1. nounThe protection, backing, or official sponsorship of a particular person or organisation.

Aegis in a sentence

• The research was carried out under the aegis of the national health agency.

• The charity operates under the aegis of the city council.

Where does aegis come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word comes from the ancient Greek aigis, the name of the protective shield or breastplate carried by Zeus and lent to his daughter Athena. The Greeks connected the word with aix, meaning 'goat', because the shield was thought to be made of goatskin, and a thunderous shaking of it was said to scatter enemies. Latin took the word over unchanged as aegis, and English borrowed that Latin form in the early 1600s, keeping the ae spelling intact. At first English used it in the literal mythological sense, but by the 1700s and 1800s it had shifted to its modern figurative meaning of protection, backing, or sponsorship. That ae opening, a giveaway of its Greek and Latin heritage, is exactly the part that trips modern writers, who often expect a plain e.

How the word is built

• aegis (from Greek aigis: the protective goatskin shield of Zeus and Athena)

People who misspell aegis also struggle with

Of the Spelling Garden players who got aegis wrong the first time, this is how many also got each of these wrong.

• idiosyncrasy 81% of them got it wrong
• connoisseur 61% of them got it wrong
• reconnaissance 50% of them got it wrong