Electrolyte

How to spell electrolyte

11 letters · 4 syllables

33 of the 167 people asked to spell electrolyte in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

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

electrolite electrolyte

What people typed instead

• electrolite11 people

How to pronounce electrolyte

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does electrolyte mean?

1. nounA substance that conducts electricity when dissolved or molten, or a mineral salt in body fluids that helps regulate hydration and nerve function.

Electrolyte in a sentence

• After the long run she drank a sports drink to replace each lost electrolyte.

• The battery cell relies on a liquid electrolyte to carry charge between the plates.

Where does electrolyte come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word was assembled in the nineteenth century from two parts that both look back to Greek. The first half, electro-, comes from the Greek elektron, which literally meant 'amber'; the ancient Greeks noticed that rubbed amber could attract light objects, and so the substance gave its name to the whole study of electricity. The second half comes from the Greek lytos, meaning 'able to be loosened or dissolved', from the verb lyein 'to loosen', the same root that gives us 'analysis' and 'dialysis'. The English chemist Michael Faraday and his colleague William Whewell coined the term around 1834 for a substance that conducts electricity when melted or dissolved, because passing a current through it loosens the substance into its component ions. The spelling trap lives in that ending: it is -lyte with a 'y', echoing its dissolving Greek root, not the -lite of minerals nor a plain -light.

How the word is built

• electro- (relating to electricity)
• -lyte (from Greek lytos: able to be loosened or dissolved)

People who misspell electrolyte also struggle with

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

• idiosyncrasy 95% of them got it wrong
• butte 94% of them got it wrong
• manoeuvre 82% of them got it wrong