Viscosity

How to spell viscosity

9 letters · 4 syllables

5 of the 27 people asked to spell viscosity in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

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

viscocity viscosity

What people typed instead

• viscocity4 people

How to pronounce viscosity

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does viscosity mean?

1. nounThe thickness of a fluid and its resistance to flowing.

Viscosity in a sentence

• The engine oil loses viscosity as it heats up.

• Cold honey has a much higher viscosity than warm water.

Where does viscosity come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Viscosity traces back to the Latin adjective viscosus, meaning 'sticky' or 'gluey', which was built on the noun viscum. That noun named the mistletoe plant, and more usefully the sticky birdlime that people boiled from its berries and smeared on branches to trap small birds. From viscosus the Late Latin abstract noun viscositas was formed to describe stickiness as a quality, and English took this in through Old French viscosité during the late Middle Ages, around the 1300s and 1400s, at first in medical and alchemical writing about thick fluids and humours. Over time scientists narrowed the sense to mean a fluid's resistance to flowing, the property that makes honey pour more slowly than water. The single 's' before the 'c' is the spelling trap, since the word looks as though it might need a doubled letter but never does.

How the word is built

• visc- (from Latin viscum: mistletoe, sticky birdlime)
• -os- (full of, sticky)
• -ity (noun suffix: state or quality of)