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South Africa’s 30 most-misspelled words of 2026, revealed from Google searches
How the list was compiled
Unscramblerer.com’s research combined data from Google Trends and Ahrefs. The company said researchers looked for searches such as “spell because” or “how do I spell colour”, and tallied multiple spelling variations for popular queries. According to Randoh Sallihall of Unscramblerer.com, the team “used Google Trends to discover the most misspelled words and Ahrefs to find the number of searches.”
“We used Google Trends to discover the most misspelled words and Ahrefs to find the number of searches. South Africa’s most misspelled words can be discovered in Google Trends by searching for “How do you spell” and “How to spell”. Ahrefs shows many variations of misspelling searches like “spell because” or “how do I spell colour”. We added up 120 search variations of top spelling searches”.
The full list (search volumes)
Below are the 30 words Unscramblerer.com identified as most commonly looked up for spelling in South Africa, with the search volumes reported by the company:
- Colour – 124,800 searches
- Favourite – 85,200 searches
- Beautiful – 84,000 searches
- License – 72,000 searches
- Weird – 70,800 searches
- Because – 68,400 searches
- Auntie – 62,400 searches
- Birthday – 57,000 searches
- Surprise – 56,400 searches
- Jewellery – 55,200 searches
- Definitely – 54,100 searches
- Weather – 52,800 searches
- Queue – 50,400 searches
- Business – 49,200 searches
- Tomorrow – 48,500 searches
- Neighbour – 45,600 searches
- Quite – 44,400 searches
- Received – 43,800 searches
- Bougie – 40,800 searches
- Gorgeous – 38,400 searches
- Croissant – 37,200 searches
- Necessary – 31,200 searches
- Honour – 28,000 searches
- Daughter – 27,600 searches
- Colleague – 21,600 searches
- Conscious – 20,400 searches
- Apologise – 19,300 searches
- Scissors – 19,200 searches
- Diarrhoea – 18,900 searches
- Unfortunately – 15,300 searches
Most-misspelled words by province
Unscramblerer.com also reported the single most-misspelled word per province, based on the same Google search data:
- Mpumalanga – Nervous
- Limpopo – Weather
- Northern Cape – Unfortunately
- Eastern Cape – Curious
- Free State – Definitely
- North West – Tomorrow
- Western Cape – Favourite
- Gauteng – Beautiful
- KwaZulu-Natal – Quiet
Research observations and advice
Unscramblerer.com highlighted several reasons these words commonly trip up spellers, noting language features that complicate English spelling.
“Analyzing South Africa’s list of most misspelled words for 2026, we found silent letters, irregular vowel sounds, tricky suffixes, difficult consonant blends, weird double letters, British spelling that uses extra letters, and French loanwords that break every phonics rule. English spelling and pronunciation is often irregular,” Sallihall said.
The company also offered advice to guard against spelling lapses in the digital age.
“Studies show that reliance on autocorrect and AI deteriorates the author’s spelling ability over time. To combat this digital amnesia, we encourage everybody to search for the correct spelling of the word when a feeling of doubt arises. This becomes an educational moment. As the saying goes, use it or lose it,” Sallihall added.
Readers interested in the dataset or methodology can consult Unscramblerer.com and the Google Trends and Ahrefs tools referenced by the company.
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Source: iol.co.za, unscramblerer.com
