Occasional

How to spell occasional

10 letters · 4 syllables

16 of the 66 people asked to spell occasional in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

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

occassional occasional

What people typed instead

• occassional4 people
• ocassional3 people

How to pronounce occasional

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does occasional mean?

1. adjectiveHappening or done from time to time rather than regularly or often.

Occasional in a sentence

• She enjoys an occasional glass of wine with dinner.

• The forecast warns of occasional showers throughout the afternoon.

Where does occasional come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin occasio, meaning an 'opportunity' or a 'fitting moment', which itself grew from the verb occidere, 'to fall down' or 'to befall', formed from ob- ('toward, against') and cadere ('to fall'). The underlying image is of something that simply falls into place at a particular time, so an 'occasion' was originally a moment when circumstances happened to come together. English took 'occasion' through Old French in the 1300s, and the adjective 'occasional' followed, first describing something tied to a specific occasion and later meaning 'happening now and then'. The same cadere root that supplies the doubled c and single s also lives inside 'accident', 'cadence', and 'coincide', all carrying that sense of falling or befalling. The classic spelling trap, two c's followed by a single s, is exactly what the Latin oc- plus cas structure predicts.

How the word is built

• oc- (variant of ob-: toward, against)
• cas (from Latin cadere: to fall)
• -ion (noun)
• -al (adjective suffix)