Suffixes -ant and -ent Word Search

IMPORTANT or IMPORTENT? DIFFERENT or DIFFERANT? Like their noun partners -ance and -ence, the adjective endings -ant and -ent sound identical and have to be learned word by word. The good news is the partnership: these adjectives pair directly with the nouns from the previous puzzle, so every word learned here teaches its partner there.

This word search contains seven -ant words and eight -ent words, designed for Year 5 and Year 6 pupils, and for fourth and fifth grade readers in the US. It pairs directly with the -ance/-ence puzzle: DISTANT with DISTANCE, SILENT with SILENCE, PATIENT with PATIENCE. Two-for-one learning, structured as one puzzle. Larger grid, words left-to-right and top-to-bottom only.

PLEASANT · DISTANT · IMPORTANT · ELEGANT · TOLERANT · CONSTANT · DOMINANT · SILENT · PATIENT · DIFFERENT · CONFIDENT · FREQUENT · INNOCENT · OBEDIENT · BRILLIANT

Adjective endings that match their nouns

The key teaching point is the pairing. If a word ends in -ant, its related noun usually ends in -ance: DISTANT → DISTANCE, TOLERANT → TOLERANCE, ELEGANT → ELEGANCE. If it ends in -ent, the noun takes -ence: SILENT → SILENCE, PATIENT → PATIENCE, CONFIDENT → CONFIDENCE. So a child who learns either spelling has learned both — one puzzle teaches thirty words.

A few are quietly tricky. IMPORTANT pairs with IMPORTANCE (both -ance, A’s all the way). DIFFERENT pairs with DIFFERENCE (both -ence, E’s throughout). The adjective ending sets the pattern, and the noun follows along. Two words in this grid have less obvious noun partners — INNOCENT pairs with INNOCENCE (E in both), BRILLIANT pairs with BRILLIANCE (A in both) — and these are the ones worth lingering on, because the pattern still holds even where the noun is rarer than the adjective.

Five words to pair with their nouns

1. DISTANT and DISTANCE. Write DISTANT on the board, then ask your child to make the noun. The A stays through both words — the adjective dictates the spelling. A two-word family learnt as one.
2. SILENT and SILENCE. Same trick, E version. Ask your child to demonstrate both (be silent for ten seconds, then describe the silence). One adjective performed, one noun coined.
3. IMPORTANT keeps its A. Ask: what is the most important thing in your child’s day? Their answer (the lunch box, the playtime, the dog) is the IMPORTANCE of the day. Same word family, two grammatical jobs.
4. CONFIDENT pairs with CONFIDENCE. Ask your child what they feel confident about. Then write CONFIDENCE underneath. The E carries through. A child confident about a skill is a child showing CONFIDENCE — the noun is the adjective’s evidence in the world.
5. BRILLIANT and BRILLIANCE. Less common noun, but real. A BRILLIANT person shows BRILLIANCE. Ask: who is the most brilliant person your child knows? The answer is usually a grandparent or a teacher. Compliment + spelling lesson, smuggled.

Three ways to pair adjectives and nouns

As a pairing starter. Two columns on the board: -ant/-ent adjectives on the left, -ance/-ence noun partners on the right, but with the right column shuffled. Class matches each adjective to its noun. Fifteen pairings in three minutes, and the rule — adjective ending dictates noun ending — is visible as a one-to-one mapping rather than a worded rule.

As sentence-doubling in pairs. One child writes a sentence with the adjective (“she was very PATIENT today”). Their partner rewrites it with the noun (“she showed great PATIENCE today”). Same meaning, two grammatical structures, two spelling endings. The grammatical move from “is + adjective” to “shows + noun” is a real upgrade to writing — and it’s the same pattern that produces “is silent” → “shows silence” and “is brilliant” → “shows brilliance”.

One-to-one at home. For homeschooling families, take five adjectives from this puzzle and make a personality chart of someone in the family: “Mum is PATIENT, CONFIDENT, BRILLIANT, ELEGANT and PLEASANT.” Then convert each adjective to its noun: “she shows PATIENCE, CONFIDENCE, BRILLIANCE, ELEGANCE and PLEASANTness” (yes, PLEASANTNESS uses -ness instead — a useful exception to notice). The chart is a portrait done in vocabulary; the pairs are practised in the act of making it.

What comes next

• Suffixes -ible and -able word search — “able to be” in two spellings
• Suffixes -ance and -ence word search — the noun partners of -ant and -ent
• All spelling word searches — the full series from foundation phonics to Year 6

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