spelling of missle or missile

My whole life I thought that an object or weapon that is fired, thrown, dropped, or otherwise projected at a target was spelled “missle“. I just learned that it is actually spelled “missile“.

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Tom Saaristo
Tom Saaristo
17 years ago

I stopped spelling it missle when I heard people saying “Miss Aisle” and looked it up. They’re pronunciation was skewed, but I never forgot that second “i” after that.

Matt Maldre
Admin
17 years ago

Wow. I’ve been spelling it wrong my whole life. Then again, I don’t ever recall having the need to spell missle/missile.

Here’s some stats on missle/missile
Google results:
2,400,000 missle
97,500,000 missile

Google results on just .gov sites:
9,800 missle
1,430,000 missile
(ha! look at all the typos on goverment websites!)

Number of people searching via overture sites (i think yahoo is included in this):
1132 missle
7605 missile

Top google ad bid
$0.15 missle
$1.02 missile

I guess most people do spell it right.

John Curren Chapman
John Curren Chapman
5 years ago

Missile is an archaic form of missle. If you live in the past it’s missile. If you live in the present it’s missle.