Conscience

How to spell conscience

10 letters · 2 syllables

40 of the 92 people asked to spell conscience in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

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

concience conscience

What people typed instead

• concience7 people

How to pronounce conscience

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does conscience mean?

1. nounThe inner sense that tells a person what is morally right or wrong and prompts feelings of guilt or approval.

Conscience in a sentence

• My conscience wouldn't let me lie.

• She has a clear conscience.

• His conscience was troubled by the lie.

Where does conscience come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin conscientia, which literally meant 'knowing things together with others' or 'shared knowledge', and later 'inward knowledge of right and wrong'. It was built from con- meaning 'with' and the verb scire meaning 'to know', the same root that gives us 'science' and 'omniscient'. The sense narrowed over time to the private moral awareness a person holds within themselves. English borrowed it through Old French conscience in the 1200s, originally in religious writing about the soul's awareness of sin. The hidden 'sci' spelling, pronounced like 'sh', is the classic trap: the word keeps the same scire root as 'science', so remembering that link preserves the awkward 'sci' in the middle.

How the word is built

• con- (with, together)
• sci (from scire: to know)
• -ence (noun suffix)

People who misspell conscience also struggle with

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

• connoisseur 100% of them got it wrong
• supersede 100% of them got it wrong
• czech 70% of them got it wrong
• rhetoric 64% of them got it wrong
• personnel 60% of them got it wrong
• nomenclature 50% of them got it wrong