Gubernatorial

How to spell gubernatorial

13 letters · 6 syllables

30 of the 78 people asked to spell gubernatorial in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

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

gouvernatorial gubernatorial

What people typed instead

• gouvernatorial3 people

How to pronounce gubernatorial

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does gubernatorial mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to a governor or to the office and duties of a governor.

Gubernatorial in a sentence

• The gubernatorial race in the state drew record campaign spending.

• She announced her gubernatorial candidacy.

Where does gubernatorial come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin gubernator, meaning 'governor' or, more literally, 'the person who steers a ship', the helmsman. That noun grew from the verb gubernare, 'to steer or to pilot', which Latin itself borrowed from the Greek kybernan, also 'to steer'. The maritime image of guiding a vessel was carried over into the idea of guiding a state, which is how the same root eventually gave English the everyday word 'govern' through Old French. Gubernatorial, however, kept the older Latin look with its tell-tale 'gubern-' rather than the smoothed-down 'govern-', which is exactly the spelling trap: it relates to a governor but is not spelled like 'govern'. The word entered English in the early 1700s, chiefly in American political usage, where it still mostly describes elections and duties tied to the office of a state governor. As a curious aside, that same Greek kybernan also steered its way into the modern word 'cybernetics'.

How the word is built

• gubernat- (from Latin gubernator: governor, helmsman)
• -orial (adjective suffix forming 'relating to')

People who misspell gubernatorial also struggle with

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

• supersede 100% of them got it wrong
• idiosyncrasy 81% of them got it wrong
• reconnaissance 53% of them got it wrong
• connoisseur 52% of them got it wrong