Miscellaneous

How to spell miscellaneous

13 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce miscellaneous

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does miscellaneous mean?

1. adjectiveMade up of various items or kinds that do not share a common category; assorted.

Miscellaneous in a sentence

• A drawer of miscellaneous items.

• I keep all sorts of miscellaneous things in this drawer.

• Among my miscellaneous papers I found an old letter.

Where does miscellaneous come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin miscellaneus, meaning 'mixed' or 'made up of various kinds', which was built on the verb miscere, 'to mix' or 'to blend together'. The Romans used the related noun miscellanea for a hotchpotch or jumble of writings, and that very form survives in English as 'miscellanea'. English adopted miscellaneous in the early 1600s to describe a collection of assorted, unrelated things. The same miscere root quietly feeds a surprising family of everyday words, including 'mix', 'mixture', 'medley', and even 'meddle'. The spelling trap lives in the middle: the unstressed 'sc' followed by the '-llane-' sequence and the '-ous' ending all blur in speech, so the doubled 'l' and the 'a' before 'neous' are easy to drop.

How the word is built

• miscellane- (from Latin miscellaneus: mixed, from miscere 'to mix')
• -ous (adjective suffix: full of, having the quality of)