In honor of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, held this past week, the data sleuths at Google Trends subsequently compiled a list of America’s “top spelling mistakes” by state.
Well, by leading “mistakes” Google Trends actually meant the words most often paired with the phrase “how to spell” in Google searches so far this year.
According to a map provided by Google, the word Washingtonians gasped, er, grasped for most often was “pneumonia.”
Sharing the honor of misspelling this word were Missouri and North Carolina.
In the Northwest, “definitely” plagued numerous Oregonians, as did “desert” for Idaho residents. Alaskans apparently had tropical interludes on their mind, with “Hawaii” topping their search results.
Among the more curious results — tsk, tsk, “Massachusetts”-searching Massachusettsans — was Hawaii, where the chief orthographic concern of island residents was not “Alaska” but “boutineer.”
While the more-common spelling for a lapel-mounted flower is “boutonniere,” perhaps a future Google Trends report will indicate what effect, if any, Hawaii’s foremost spelling concern might have on the islands’ lei vendors.
