Penchant

How to spell penchant

8 letters · 2 syllables

137 of the 328 people asked to spell penchant in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

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

ponchon penchant

What people typed instead

• ponchon29 people
• ponshon5 people
• pentiant4 people
• pentient4 people
• pention4 people
• ponchant4 people

How to pronounce penchant

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does penchant mean?

1. nounA strong and habitual liking or inclination for something.

Penchant in a sentence

• He has a penchant for expensive watches that strains his budget.

• Her penchant for arriving late annoyed the rest of the team.

Where does penchant come from?

Language of origin: French

This word comes straight from French, where penchant is the present participle of the verb pencher, meaning 'to lean' or 'to incline'. That verb traces back through Vulgar Latin pendicare to the Latin pendere, which literally meant 'to hang' or 'to weigh', the same root that gives us 'pendulum' and 'pending'. The image behind the word is physical: a penchant is a way in which your tastes lean or tip in one direction, just as a body leans toward something it likes. English borrowed it in the seventeenth century and kept the French spelling and a hint of the French sound, which is exactly why the silent, French-looking 'ch' (pronounced like 'sh' or 'ch') and the unexpected '-ant' ending make it a spelling trap. Because the word never anglicised its look, writers must remember it is a leaning, not a 'pension' or a 'penchent'.

How the word is built

• pench- (from French pencher: to lean, incline)
• -ant (present participle suffix)

People who misspell penchant also struggle with

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

• butte 98% of them got it wrong
• genealogy 93% of them got it wrong
• supersede 91% of them got it wrong
• millennium 88% of them got it wrong
• idiosyncrasy 88% of them got it wrong
• connoisseur 87% of them got it wrong