Entrepreneurial

How to spell entrepreneurial

15 letters · 6 syllables

64 of the 174 people asked to spell entrepreneurial in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

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

entrepeneurial entrepreneurial

What people typed instead

• entrepeneurial16 people
• entreprenurial9 people
• entrepeneureal3 people
• entrepenurial3 people

How to pronounce entrepreneurial

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does entrepreneurial mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the setting up of businesses and the willingness to take financial risks in the hope of profit.

Entrepreneurial in a sentence

• Her entrepreneurial instincts pushed her to launch three startups before turning thirty.

• The college runs an entrepreneurial programme that teaches students how to pitch to investors.

Where does entrepreneurial come from?

Language of origin: French

This word traces back to the French verb entreprendre, meaning 'to undertake' or 'to take in hand', which was itself built from entre, meaning 'between' or 'among', and prendre, meaning 'to take', from the Latin prehendere, 'to grasp'. From entreprendre came the agent noun entrepreneur, literally 'one who undertakes', originally used for a manager or organiser of a musical or theatrical production. English borrowed entrepreneur in the early 1800s and steadily widened it to mean a person who launches and risks capital on a business venture. The adjective entrepreneurial was then formed in English by adding the suffix -ial, and it became common only in the twentieth century as business culture grew. The long, distinctly French middle, that unstressed entre-pre-neur cluster, is exactly why the word is such a spelling minefield: the silent flow of vowels gives almost no phonetic clue to the order of letters.

How the word is built

• entre- (from French entre: among, between)
• prendre (to take)
• -eur (agent: one who does)
• -ial (adjective suffix)

People who misspell entrepreneurial also struggle with

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

• connoisseur 83% of them got it wrong
• idiosyncrasy 78% of them got it wrong
• reconnaissance 78% of them got it wrong
• bourgeois 44% of them got it wrong
• rendezvous 41% of them got it wrong