Select the INCORRECTLY spelt word.

Correct — D. Recieve is the misspelling. The word is spelt r-e-c-e-i-v-e.

Rule: i before e, except after c. The letter in front of the pair here is a c, so the pair is written ei — receive, deceive, conceive, perceive, ceiling.

Eliminate the other three by spelling them out rather than by feel: n-e-c-e-s-s-a-r-y, a-c-c-o-m-m-o-d-a-t-e, p-o-s-s-e-s-s-i-o-n. Each is printed correctly.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Necessary — Necessary is correct as printed — one c, double s. Candidates who want to double the c are misremembering the word, but nothing on this line is wrong.
• (b)
  Accommodate — Accommodate is correct as printed — double c and double m, the fullest spelling of the four. The usual error is dropping one of those pairs, and this option drops neither.
• (c)
  Possession — Possession is correct as printed: two double-s pairs, p-o-s-s-e-s-s-i-o-n. Nothing is missing or transposed, so it is not the word being asked for.

A spelling item gives you three correct words and one wrong one, so the fast route is a rule that decides a letter — not a general sense that a word looks odd.

The rule that settles this set is i before e, except after c: receive, ceiling and deceive against believe, achieve and relieve.

The fuller form of the rule adds a sound clause — i before e except after c when the pair sounds like ee. That clause is why science and ancient are not counterexamples.

Key facts

• Receive follows c-e-i, like deceive, conceive, perceive and ceiling.
• Believe, achieve and relieve keep i-e because no c stands before the pair.
• Seize, weird, foreign, neither and leisure are genuine exceptions to the jingle.
• Necessary has one c and two s. Accommodate has two c and two m.

Common traps

• Judging by how the word looks instead of spelling it out letter by letter.
• Marking Accommodate as the error because it is the longest and most doubled word on the list.

No directly related past PYQ was found.