Bizarre

How to spell bizarre

7 letters · 2 syllables

9 of the 23 people asked to spell bizarre in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

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

bizzare bizarre

What people typed instead

• bizzare6 people

How to pronounce bizarre

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bizarre mean?

1. adjectiveVery strange or unusual in a way that is striking or hard to explain.

Bizarre in a sentence

• The witness gave a bizarre account of the accident that nobody could verify.

• Investigators were baffled by the bizarre pattern of missing files.

Where does bizarre come from?

Language of origin: French

The word came into English in the early 1600s from French bizarre, meaning 'odd, fantastic, or strange'. French had taken it from Italian bizzarro, which originally meant 'angry, hot-tempered, or capricious' before softening into the sense of 'eccentric' or 'unusual'. One long-standing suggestion traces it further back to the Basque word bizar, meaning 'beard', the idea being that bearded Spanish soldiers struck the Italians as fierce and strange-looking, though this Basque link is disputed and may be folk reasoning. What is certain is the spelling trap: English kept the French shape exactly, with a single z but a doubled r and a silent final e, which is why writers so often misjudge how many of each letter it needs. It is unrelated to the similar-sounding 'bazaar', a market word of Persian origin, even though the two are constantly confused on the page.

How the word is built

• bizarre (a single unanalysable borrowing from French; no native prefix, root, or suffix, with the doubled -rr and final silent -e both inherited from the French spelling)