Spelling
Independant or independent?
Independent is the right spelling. Independant is a common misspelling of it.
INDEPENDANT has A where INDEPENDENT has E.
Why people write INDEPENDANT
In an unstressed syllable, A, E, I and O all sound like a quick "uh", so the ear cannot tell which one is written.
Like dependent: it ends in -ENT.
How often INDEPENDENT is misspelled
In the web pages Google counted for its trillion-word corpus (Peter Norvig's word counts), INDEPENDANT appears 13 times for every 1,000 INDEPENDENT, about once for every 77 correct uses.
Is INDEPENDANT a word?
No. INDEPENDANT is not in NWL2023, Collins Scrabble Words or ENABLE, the word lists Scrabble and other word games use, so no word game accepts it. INDEPENDENT is in all three and scores 15 points in Scrabble before bonus squares.
What independent means
adjective: Free from external control and constraint.
For example: "an independent mind"
More words with the same mistake
The wrong vowel:
More spelling help
Commonly misspelled words, grouped by the mistake · Free printables and word games for teachers · Unscramble any letters