Rebellious

How to spell rebellious

10 letters · 3 syllables

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

rebelious rebellious

What people typed instead

• rebelious3 people

How to pronounce rebellious

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does rebellious mean?

1. adjectiveShowing a defiant unwillingness to obey authority, rules, or convention.

Rebellious in a sentence

• The manager struggled to motivate a rebellious team that ignored every new policy.

• As a teenager she went through a rebellious phase and broke her parents' curfew most weekends.

Where does rebellious come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin rebellis, an adjective describing someone who renews a war, built from re- meaning 'again' and bellum meaning 'war'. In ancient Rome it specifically labelled a conquered people who took up arms a second time against their rulers, so the original idea was literally 'making war again'. The Latin term passed into Old French as rebelle, and the related noun rebellion entered English in the late 1300s, with the adjective rebellious following soon after to describe defiant or insubordinate behaviour. The same bellum root survives in 'belligerent' and 'bellicose', both of which carry the flavour of fighting. A useful spelling clue is that the double l comes straight from the Latin bellum, and the ending is -ious, the same suffix found in words like 'ambitious' and 'cautious'.

How the word is built

• re- (again)
• bell (from Latin bellum: war)
• -ious (adjective suffix, full of)