Google's Top 10 Most Challenging Words to Spell

Arguably, the hardest word to spell is the full chemical name for a human protein, commonly known as titin, which contains 189,819 letters and would take over three hours to pronounce.

The list of complicated scientific terms is practically endless. However, they don't cause many problems since most of us aren't attempting to spell them.

If we follow that logic, the most difficult word to spell might be the one that people Google the most for help. By that measure, restaurant stands as the ultimate head-scratcher.

The information comes from unscrambled-words.com, a platform that helps users discover all the words they can form with a set of letters. It's a useful tool for Scrabble and other word games, though you might want to check with your fellow players before using it in your games. The site's data team analyzed Google search trends from the past year and found that restaurant garners around 95,000 spelling-related searches every month. It's no surprise why it's such a tricky word: Based on how it's pronounced, you'd expect it to end with -aunt, not -ant. (And just so you know, restaurateur doesn’t even have an 'n' in it.)

Complicated vowel combinations are a common feature in the top 10, particularly i’s and e’s. As the old saying goes: i before e, except after c, or when it sounds like ay, as in neighbor and weigh. While there are plenty of exceptions, the two examples from this list, niece and receipt, follow the rule.

Receipt isn’t the only word with a silent p that confuses people. Check out the other one—and the rest of the top 10—below.