Entrepreneurship

How to spell entrepreneurship

16 letters · 5 syllables

4 of the 26 people asked to spell entrepreneurship in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

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

entrepeneurship entrepreneurship

What people typed instead

• entrepeneurship3 people

How to pronounce entrepreneurship

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does entrepreneurship mean?

1. nounThe activity of setting up and running businesses, taking on financial risk in the hope of profit.

Entrepreneurship in a sentence

• The college runs a course on small-business entrepreneurship.

• Years of entrepreneurship taught her how to manage cash flow under pressure.

Where does entrepreneurship come from?

Language of origin: French

This word is built on the French entrepreneur, which comes from the verb entreprendre, meaning 'to undertake' or 'to take in hand'. That verb itself was assembled from entre, meaning 'between' (from the Latin inter), and prendre, meaning 'to take' (from the Latin prehendere, 'to grasp'). In its earliest French use an entrepreneur was simply someone who undertook a project or venture, especially a commercial or contracting one, and English borrowed the agent noun in the early 1800s. The native English suffix -ship, the same one found in friendship and ownership, was then bolted on to name the state or activity of being an entrepreneur. The long, French-flavoured middle, with its tricky -preneur- spelled the French way rather than how it sounds, is exactly what makes the word so easy to fumble.

How the word is built

• entre- (from French entreprendre: to undertake, literally 'take between')
• -eur (agent suffix: one who does)
• -ship (English noun suffix: state or quality of)