Robin-Lee Francke|Published 5 minutes agoWe all had moments where our spelling was not the saving grace of the day, and many of us, when in doubt, opted to Google the correct word. But, I am sure many of you did not know that Google actually took note of this, and the most misspelled words in South Africa for 2026 have been revealed.Unscramblerer.com has conducted an analysis of the Google search data from January 1 until June 8, 2026, from Google Trends for “How do you spell” and “How to spell”. Unscramblerer.com ‘s Randoh Sallihall said the research was conducted by word unscrambling experts. Sallihall explained the researchers’ methodology: “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”. These are the most misspelled words in South Africa: 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.The company has also revealed the most misspelled words by province: Mpumalanga - Nervous Limpopo - Weather Northern Cape - Unfortunately Eastern Cape - Curious Free State - Definitely North West - Tomorrow Western Cape - Favourite Gauteng - Beautiful KwaZulu-Natal - Quiet “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 further had some advice for those doubtful spelling moments. “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. [email protected]IOLRelated Topics: