Fluorescence

How to spell fluorescence

12 letters · 3 syllables

24 of the 38 people asked to spell fluorescence in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

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

flourescence fluorescence

What people typed instead

• flourescence9 people
• florescence3 people

How to pronounce fluorescence

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fluorescence mean?

1. nounThe emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light or other radiation, lasting only while the source is present.

Fluorescence in a sentence

• Under the ultraviolet lamp the minerals showed a vivid green fluorescence.

• The forensic team relied on fluorescence to reveal traces invisible in ordinary light.

Where does fluorescence come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word was deliberately coined in 1852 by the British physicist George Gabriel Stokes, who needed a name for the glow that certain substances give off when struck by light. He built it on the mineral fluorspar (also called fluorite), in which he had observed the effect, and added an ending modelled on 'opalescence'. The first part traces back to the Latin fluor, meaning 'a flowing', because fluorspar was used in metalworking as a flux that helped ores flow when melted. So the spelling carries that old Latin sense of flowing right at its start, which is also why the chemical element fluorine, extracted from the same mineral, shares the 'fluor' beginning. The unusual cluster 'fluor' followed by the soft '-escence' is the part that trips writers, since it does not sound the way it looks.

How the word is built

• fluor- (from fluorspar, the mineral, ultimately Latin fluor 'a flowing')
• -esc- (beginning to be)
• -ence (noun of state)

People who misspell fluorescence also struggle with

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

• connoisseur 92% of them got it wrong
• idiosyncrasy 83% of them got it wrong
• accommodating 45% of them got it wrong