Certain sets of words in the English language tend to confuse people. I have found the following to be among them:
AXEL / AXIL / AXLE
Ha! I bet I caught your attention with that middle word, didn’t I? To confess the truth, I doubt many people even know the word axil, much less mix it up with the other two. But when I came across it in the dictionary, I couldn’t resist adding it in here as all three of these words are homophones.
But let’s get to the other two words first as they are the ones more likely to cause spelling confusion. The noun axel (often capitalized) is the name of a figure-skating jump named after the Norwegian skater Axel Paulsen. The noun axle, on the other hand, generally refers to a pin or shaft on which a wheel or pair of wheels revolves.
INCORRECT: I love to watch Olympic skaters perform the axle.
CORRECT: I love to watch Olympic skaters perform the axel.
INCORRECT: Our vacation came to an abrupt halt when the front axel on our car broke.
CORRECT: Our vacation came to an abrupt halt when the front axle on our car broke.
For the record, a definition of axil is the upper angle between a branch or leaf and the axis from which it arises. Whew! Got that? If you need to use this word, just remember that it has an I in the middle like the word axis.
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