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The old masters - Poetry by Heart Woman - or Suffragette?

Home > Is it -ance or -ence?

Is it -ance or -ence?
For those of you who’ve been following my occasional series about homophonous
affixes (or, to put it another way, word-endings and -beginnings that sound the same
when spoken!), you should now know your -ables from your -ibles and be proficient
in fore- versus for- or four. There are plenty more similar-sounding affixes, though,
so I thought it was high time to disentangle another set: the pair of suffixes -ance and
-ence, and the related pairs -ant/-ent and -ancy/-ency.

These endings are much used in word-formation and cause no amount of spelling
confusion, as is evident from many examples in today’s English. For example, the
Oxford English Corpus (OEC) shows that independent is misspelled as independant
737 times. Although this only represents 0.3% of the total occurrences of the word,
what is significant is that this error appears in many newspapers (such as The
Guardian) and specialist journals (e.g. American Zoologist), which have been edited
and proofread. It may be comforting to learn that journalists, editors, and other
professional writers are just as prone to these mistakes as ordinary mortals, but
correct spelling does matter if you’re writing for public consumption: misspellings
are distracting or tend to make people irritated, and so the thrust of what you’re
saying is diminished or gets lost completely.

Lack of stress leads to spelling mess…

Why do people get these endings confused? To be fair, anyone could be forgiven for
not knowing which one to choose: when you hear them spoken aloud, they usually
sound indistinguishable. This is because, in most English words, these endings are
pronounced as unstressed syllables (try saying independent, and you’ll hear that the
stress is on -pen-, not -dent).

The vowel sound we make when we say the unstressed endings -ance/-ence, -ant/-
ent, and -ancy/-ency as part of longer words is /ə/, a centralized, neutral vowel
technically known as a schwa; the sound used in the first syllable of ago, rather than
/a/ (as in cat) or /e/ (as in bed).

The good news is that, although you should always check any spellings in a
dictionary if you’re not sure, there are a few simple rules which you can apply to this
set of words to make choosing the correct suffix easier.

-ance or -ence?
These endings are used to make nouns, meaning either: a quality or state (e.g.
ignorance is the state of being ignorant about something) or an action (e.g. emergence
is the action of emerging from somewhere).

One key way of knowing which ending to choose is to be aware of the words that
these nouns are formed from. Some are made from verbs (e.g. performance from
perform) and some are from adjectives (for example intelligence from intelligent).

-ance

 If the word is formed from a verb that ends in -y, -ure, or -ear, then the
ending of the noun will be spelled -ance, for example:

Verb Noun
apply appliance
comply compliance
vary variance
assure assurance
endure endurance
insure insurance
appear appearance
clear clearance
forbear forbearance

 If the noun is related to a verb which ends in -ate, then the ending is likely to
be -ance, for instance:

Verb Noun
deviate deviance
dominate dominance
hesitate hesitance
tolerate tolerance

 A further tip is that, if the stem of the word (the part before the ending) ends
in a ‘hard’ c (pronounced like the c in cab) or a ‘hard’ g (pronounced like the
g in get), then the ending will be spelled -ance. For example: significance;
elegance.
As for the other nouns which end in -ance, there are no hard-and-fast rules, so you
may find it helpful to memorize them. Here’s a handy list of the most common:

abundance disturbance nuisance

acceptance fragrance performance
acquaintance grievance perseverance
allowance guidance provenance
assistance hindrance relevance
attendance ignorance resemblance
balance importance resistance
circumstance inheritance substance
countenance instance utterance
distance maintenance vengeance

-ence

 If the word is formed from a verb ending in -ere, then the ending will be
spelled -ence. For example:

Verb Noun
adhere adherence
cohere coherence
interfere interference
revere reverence

So, you may ask, why is perseverance (from persevere) spelled -ance? Sorry, it’s
simply an exception to this rule…

 Does the related verb end in a stressed -er syllable? If yes, then -ence is the
correct ending, as in:

Verb Noun
confer conference
infer inference
prefer preference
refer reference
 transfer transference

Note that, although the verb differ is stressed on the first syllable rather than the
final –er, difference is still spelled with -ence at the end.

 If the word contains the syllables -cid-, -fid-, -sid-, or -vid- immediately before
the ending, the correct suffix is -ence. For instance:

confidence
evidence
incidence
residence

 If the stem of the word ends in a soft c (pronounced like the c in cell) or a soft
g (pronounced like the g in gin), then the ending will be -ence. For example:

adolescence
indulgence
innocence
intelligence
licence
negligence

The eagle-eyed amongst you will have spotted vengeance in in the -ance list – yes,
although it’s pronounced with a soft g, it’s an exception to this rule.

Again, some words don’t follow these rules (or the ‘rules’ have several exceptions,
so can be rather difficult to learn). Here’s a list of some common nouns ending in -
ence:

absence dependence obedience

affluence difference patience
audience eloquence persistence
benevolence essence precedence
circumference excellence presence
competence existence sentence
 conscience experience sequence
consequence impertinence silence
convenience influence vehemence
correspondence insistence violence

-ancy or -ency?

These endings are used to form nouns which refer to a quality or state: for instance,
infancy is the state of being an infant and fluency is the quality of being fluent.

Reassuringly, -ancy and -ency behave very much like -ance and -ence, which means
that similar spelling tips are applicable. For example:

 Nouns made from verbs ending in -ate have the spelling -ancy, e.g. hesitancy
(from hesitate) or vacancy (from vacate).
 Nouns with a soft c or g before the ending are spelled -ency, e.g. agency;
emergency; urgency; complacency; decency.

Here are some of the most common nouns ending in -ancy:

accountancy discrepancy militancy pregnancy tenancy

buoyancy expectancy occupancy redundancy truancy

And these are the most common ones that end with -ency:

consistency efficiency frequency proficiency tendency

currency fluency leniency sufficiency transparency

-ant or -ent?

The suffix pair -ant and -ent are used:

 to form adjectives referring to a quality or state, such as arrogant, fragrant,

convenient, different.
 to form nouns which refer to an agent (someone or something which does
something). For example, an accountant is a person who prepares financial
accounts, and a resident is a person who resides somewhere.

Again, similar rules apply to these words as to words ending in -ance/-ence, or -

ancy/-ency. For example:
  Words which derive from verbs ending in -y take the -ant suffix, e.g. defy—
>defiant; occupy—>occupant.
 If the word is related to a verb which ends in -ate, then the ending is -ant, e.g.
deviate–>deviant; hesitate—>hesitant; tolerate—>tolerant.
 If the word is related to a verb ending in -ere, the ending is -ent: cohere—
>coherent; adhere—>adherent.
 The ‘hard c/g’ and ‘soft c/g’ rules also apply. So -ant is used as the suffix
following the hard sounds (e.g. extravagant, communicant) and -ent for the
soft sounds (e.g. intelligent, recent).

Here are some of the most common nouns and adjectives ending in -ant:

accountant deodorant gallant pleasant

assistant distant important redundant
blatant dominant instant significant
brilliant elegant nonchalant triumphant
contestant fragrant observant vigilant

These are some of the most frequent words ending in -ent:

adolescent efficient innocent permanent

confident equivalent insolent prominent
consistent evident lenient prudent
continent excellent magnificent silent
current fraudulent negligent sufficient
decent incident obedient urgent
different independent patient violent

Dependent/dependant and pendant/pendent

These two pairs of words can end in -ant or -ent. They occur as both nouns and
adjectives and the spelling depends on their part of speech.

Starting with dependent/dependant: in British English, the noun always used to be

spelled dependant, but the variant noun spelling dependent is now acceptable too. In
US English, the standard noun spelling is dependent. The adjective is always spelled
dependent, however, in both varieties of English. (Independent, however, is always
spelled with the –ent suffix, whether it’s used as an adjective or a noun.) To
summarize:
 Noun: He’s a single man with no dependents. [British and US English]
He’s a single man with no dependants. [British English]
Adjective: We’re dependent on his goodwill. [British and US English]
We’re dependant on his goodwill. X [Incorrect use]

The situation regarding pendant/pendent is a little less complex. You can use the
spelling pendant for both the noun (she wore a silver pendant) and the adjective
(pendant catkins), but the spelling pendent is never used for the noun: it’s just an
adjective (pendent catkins).

One final tip: because the same rules apply to each pair of endings, once you know
how one word in the set is spelled, then you can be sure that the related words are
spelled the same way. For instance, if you know that competence is spelled with the -
ence suffix, then it follows that the endings of the related adjective competent and the
noun competency also take the appropriate -e- spellings. I’m sure you’ll agree, it’s
nice that one part of this suffix confusion is consistant – sorry, wait, I mean
consistent.

 The opinions and other information contained in OxfordWords blog posts and
comments do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of Oxford
University Press.


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 Guest blogger

Catherine Soanes

Catherine Soanes is an ex-lexicographer and EFL teacher.

 Published

May 3 / 2013

 Categories
o Grammar and writing help
 Tags

confusable, popular, spelling, suffix, writing help

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