Separating

How to spell separating

10 letters · 4 syllables

7 of the 43 people asked to spell separating in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

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

seperating separating

What people typed instead

• seperating6 people

How to pronounce separating

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does separating mean?

1. verbIn the act of dividing, setting apart, or moving things away from one another.

Separating in a sentence

• Separating the recycling from the general waste takes only a minute each evening.

• The recipe begins by separating the egg yolks from the whites.

Where does separating come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb separare, meaning 'to set apart' or 'to divide', which was built from the prefix se- 'apart' and parare 'to prepare or make ready'. The literal sense was something like 'to make ready apart', and over time it settled firmly on the idea of dividing one thing from another. English took the verb 'separate' in during the 1400s and 1500s, partly through Old French, with 'separating' as its ordinary present participle. The notorious spelling trap lives in the middle: the second vowel is an unstressed schwa, so it sounds like 'sep-uh-rate' and tempts writers to put an 'e' where the Latin par demands an 'a'. Remembering that 'par' is the same root found in 'prepare' and 'apparatus' is a reliable way to lock in that troublesome a.

How the word is built

• se- (apart)
• par (from parare: to prepare, make ready)
• -ate (verb)
• -ing (present participle)