The Difference between Cereal and Serial

Knowing the difference between Cereal and Serial is very important as English learners. This is simply because these two words are different. The word cereal sounds great and healthy whereas serial implies something bad and scary.

ESL students often have these words mixed up because they are homophones, meaning they are similar-sounding. However, finding the difference between cereal and serial is easy. Cereal is a kind of food while serial refers to a person.

In this article, we are going to find out the difference between cereal and serial.

Cereal

“Do you like to have cereal for breakfast?”

“Why not! That sounds healthy.”

As a food, Cereal is a type of grass such as wheat, oats, or corn, which has starchy grains used as food.

Other cereal grains we commonly see in the supermarket are barley, spelt, and grain amaranth.

Here are some sentences with the word cereal in it.

I have a bowl of cereal every day for breakfast.

I always pair cereal with some milk.

Young kids love to have cereal for breakfast.

Serial

As mentioned above, serial and cereal are words that have different meanings but sounds the same. In spoken English, you can’t really tell the difference between these words, but not in writing. Let me tell you the definition of the word serial.

The word serial describes a person who commits a similar crime repeatedly. Meaning to say, a person has been involved in several crimes and hunted by the government.

For example:

The police arrested the serial rapist in his home yesterday.

Ted Bundy is among the most prolific serial killer in the world. The serial killer admitted killing 36 young women.

She wrote a thriller about a brutal serial killer.

Unlike the word cereal which refers only to food, the word serial also has another meaning, And it means something kind of important like the serial number. Serial, in a positive sense, means relating to such publication or production.

For example:

Each computer is uniquely specified by its serial number.

The Federal Reserve had records of consecutive serial numbers.

Things to remember

Just like other homophones, the words cereal and serial are different. You must carefully check their spelling when you use them in writing. Always remember these things to avoid mixing them up.

Cereal is a type of grass such as wheat, oats, or corn, which has starchy grains used as food.

Serial describes a person who commits a similar crime repeatedly.