Chauffeur

How to spell chauffeur

9 letters · 2 syllables

11 of the 27 people asked to spell chauffeur in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

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

chaffeur chauffeur

What people typed instead

• chaffeur5 people
• chauffer5 people

How to pronounce chauffeur

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does chauffeur mean?

1. nounA person employed to drive someone else's car, especially a private or luxury vehicle.
2. verbTo drive someone around in a car as a service.

Chauffeur in a sentence

• noun

  The hotel arranged a chauffeur to collect guests from the airport.

• verb

  She agreed to chauffeur the visiting clients between meetings all week.

• noun

  The company director travels everywhere with a uniformed chauffeur.

• verb

  A local firm will chauffeur wedding guests to the reception.

Where does chauffeur come from?

Language of origin: French

This word comes straight from French, where chauffeur literally meant 'stoker' or 'one who heats', from the verb chauffer, 'to heat'. That verb traces back to the Latin calefacere, a compound of calere, 'to be warm', and facere, 'to make', so the underlying idea is 'to make warm'. The French word originally described the person who tended the firebox of a steam engine, and when early motor cars arrived in the late 1800s the term was carried over to the driver who fired up and operated the engine. English adopted it around 1900, keeping the full French spelling intact, which is exactly why the silent, vowel-heavy 'eu' ending and the 'au' cluster trip up writers. The same calere root warms up relatives such as 'calorie' and 'cauldron'.

How the word is built

• chauff- (from French chauffer: to heat)
• -eur (French agent suffix: one who does)

People who misspell chauffeur also struggle with

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

• idiosyncrasy 73% of them got it wrong
• reconnaissance 73% of them got it wrong
• connoisseur 64% of them got it wrong