Auspices

How to spell auspices

8 letters · 3 syllables

17 of the 42 people asked to spell auspices in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

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

ospices auspices

What people typed instead

• ospices5 people

How to pronounce auspices

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does auspices mean?

1. nounThe protection, sponsorship, or guiding support under which something is done, most often in the phrase 'under the auspices of'.

Auspices in a sentence

• The conference was held under the auspices of the national museum.

• The research continued under the auspices of a respected university.

Where does auspices come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin auspicium, which described the ancient Roman practice of reading omens by watching the flight and behaviour of birds. That noun was built from auspex, a contraction of avis 'bird' and the verb specere 'to look at' or 'to watch', so an auspex was literally a 'bird-watcher' whose job was to interpret divine signs before any important undertaking. Because nothing significant was begun without first taking the auspices, the plural came to mean the favourable backing or protective guidance under which something proceeds. English borrowed it in the late 1500s, at first for the omens themselves and soon afterwards for patronage and support. The same specere 'to look' root surfaces in everyday words like 'inspect' and 'spectacle', and the buried Latin avis is why the spelling keeps that tricky -spic- in the middle rather than the -spec- you might expect.

How the word is built

• au- (from avis: bird)
• spic (from specere: to look/watch)
• -es (plural ending)

People who misspell auspices also struggle with

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

• connoisseur 94% of them got it wrong
• idiosyncrasy 94% of them got it wrong
• commandant 73% of them got it wrong
• fluorescence 62% of them got it wrong