Fashion Terms — the Apparel Search fashion terminology directory
This page answers the honest “not certain” visitor. Certainty is available: the correct spelling is APPAREL. If you are using the word apparal, you are using the word incorrectly — the word ends with “el”, not “al” — and this page exists to settle the question once, kindly, and for good.
What do you mean, you are not certain about the spelling of the word apparel ???
| Apparal |
Are you trying to make us crazy? Clearly, the correct spelling is APPAREL. If you are using the word apparal, you are using the word incorrectly.
If you do not mind, please begin spelling the word with an "el" at the end and not as apparal with an "al".
Thank you for your kind consideration.
Uncertainty about this word is the most reasonable position of all, because the misspelling is genuinely common — it turns up in search queries, auction listings, resumes and even painted signage. The spoken word gives little help: apparel's last syllable is unstressed, and English offers several spellings for that sound. What settles the question is not pronunciation but the written record. Dictionaries, style guides, customs schedules and the mastheads of the trade press all write the word the same way: apparel.
Once the pattern is seen, it tends to stick. The word opens with “app”, like “appliance” and “applique”'s cousin “apply”; it carries “par” in the middle; and it closes with “el”. Three chunks, seven letters, no third “a” anywhere. A writer who was not certain a minute ago can be certain now — and can pass the same small certainty along the next time “apparal” appears in a draft, a listing or a store window. Thank you for your kind consideration in checking.
It is apparel, clearly and certainly. Please begin spelling the word with an “el” at the end, not as apparal with an “al”.
Split it as ap-par-el: the end of the word is “el”, like the letter L itself. If the last two letters you wrote are “al”, the word is wrong.
In search boxes, file names and published copy, yes — the wrong spelling is a different string of letters, so it will not match the correct term, and readers who know the word will spot the error immediately.