“Disheveled” or “Dishevelled”—What's the difference?

Usage by country

Where each spelling is used

Of the 12 countries below, 6 prefer “disheveled” and 4 prefer “dishevelled”. Usage levels are out of 100; the more common spelling in each country is in bold.

Usage level out of 100 (if available).
Country	disheveled	dishevelled	Preference
United States	96	4	“disheveled”
United Kingdom	41	59	“dishevelled”
India	55	45	“disheveled”
Philippines	91	9	“disheveled”
Canada	81	19	“disheveled”
Australia	34	66	“dishevelled”
Liberia	0	0	Not enough data
Ireland	33	67	“dishevelled”
New Zealand	38	62	“dishevelled”
Jamaica	100	0	“disheveled”
Trinidad & Tobago	100	0	“disheveled”
Guyana	0	0	Not enough data

Usage

Examples in context

Real sentences for each spelling. Hover an example to copy it.

“disheveled”

…Pokrovskoye a changed man, looking disheveled and behaving differently than he…
…hooked nose; her hair is disheveled, her garments tattered and torn.
…exhausted, and her hair hangs disheveled as her head droops.
…in Tokyo, they saw a disheveled Downs running toward them saying…
…abandoning him, a drunken and disheveled Bradbury comes to Hundred, revealing…
…Christmas morning, his Santa suit disheveled and dirty, Harry returns to…
People saw her disheveled appearance and were afraid; Charles…
It is naked and has disheveled hair, five to six cun
…then, he has become a disheveled, bitter alcoholic who hunts demons…
Lemoyne looks disheveled, with rough hair and open…

“dishevelled”

…its ample fringe-like plumage, the dishevelled quality of which is communicated…
…binds, an intracellular protein named Dishevelled (Dvl) is activated via phosphorylation.
…of music (sparse, eerie, casually dishevelled, tangibly cool) that will spread…
…cover of which depicted a dishevelled image of Buster Keaton.
…Mike Diver called it "dirty, dishevelled, unsure and paranoid; fearful, easily…
Scelba built the country's dishevelled police into a force of…
Nkd1 binds to the Dishevelled (Dvl) family of proteins (DVL1,…
…wears a bandana, long, black dishevelled hair and is always seen
…have a DIX domain are Dishevelled and DIXDC1.
…and studio production, with the dishevelled beauty of everyday life, the…

Examples are Wikipedia snippets under the CC ShareAlike 3.0 license.

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