Spactula Spatula?

Question

I've never actually been required to spell Spatula/Spactula but I have thought my whole life that it was spelled with the c "spaCtula". My friend and I were talking today and he said it and i asked him if he knew how to spell it. He guessed spaTula and I corrected him. in disbelief he looked it up in the dictionary to find he was right. So I know that spaTula is the correct spelling... but how could I be so mistaken? Are they both acceptable spellings? If you look up "spactula" in a search engine you will get many responses. so it is a common spelling but is it incorrect? why would so many people make such an odd typo? If possible I'd like as thorough of an explanation as possible.

Answer 1

It happens sometimes that you learn something the wrong way and it just sticks with you, and lets face it, this is not exactly an everyday word unless your a chef! It is definitely spatula, I have never seen "spactula "and I do an enormous amount of reading, I especially love cook books too! I have done something similar once and was hellbent on finding ANYTHING to prove that I was right, when in fact , I wasn't!
LOL, even the "spellcheck" tried to get me to change spactula!

Answer 2

This is an e-mail a friend sent me. I have not seen her since we were 15, some 30 years ago, but we e-mail. When I started reading it, I didn't know what it was. I then realized, it was about ME! Wow! Me and a Spatula that is.


This is really crazy but I have to tell you… I had a particular spatula for years and years. I used it all the time. It had been used so much, it was razor thin. Even though it only had part of it’s handle left, it was just the perfect spatula. (yea, crazy I know, it takes so little for some of us). Well it finally broke for good and there was no way to fix it. (sounds like I need to get a life, huh)

I started trying to figure how long I had been using it and it occurred to me that I got it from YOU… Do you remember when you had that little house in the back of Jim’s house??? You had to clean you’re stuff out of it for some reason and you gave me all the kitchen stuff.

You won’t believe the things I am still using in my kitchen after 30+ years!!!! I still use the canister set and a colander from you. There is a pan that my daughter calls the 70s pan because its identical to a pan they show on “that 70s show” . There is a yellow glow in the dark cup that my children and grandchildren loved when they were babies. And there is a cookbook that I have used for so long, it is falling apart. You were evidently planning on cooking a Thanksgiving meal cause you had written a recipe for dressing in the front.

Wow… think its time to update a few items or why fix it if it ain’t broke?

Really brought back some memories…..

Have a good day

Your friend

Answer 3

I think it's one of those words that is often misspelled. Things like that happen all the time. I have always spelled it spatula, and I've never seen it spelled another way. It could also be a regional thing, you know, like how some people call carbonated beverages pop and others call it coke and still others call it soda. But as far as this word goes, I have no idea when or where this common misspelling started.

Answer 4

Spatula is the correct way of spelling the cooking utensil.

Answer 5

No, spactula is not an acceptable spelling. It is not a typo, many people simply do not know how to spell. As kindergarteners do, many adults spell things the way they sound, because they never learned how to spell correctly.

Answer 6

I have never in my life (over 40 years) seen it spelled with a "c". It looks very odd.
Do you pronounce the "c" also? Now that would be wrong for sure!

Answer 7

man go to school obviously u didnt learn much, thats what happens when you spend ur time sleepign in class or playing hooky