abominable
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
10 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "abominable", 10-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "abominable" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "abominable" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
abominable is anEnglishadj. It means: Worthy of, or causing, abhorrence, as a thing of evil omen; odious in the utmost degree; very hateful; detestable; loathsome; execrable. Pronounced /əˈbɑm.ə.nə.bl̩/.
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See how abominable compares against similar English words.
Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | abominable |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adj |
| IPA | /əˈbɑm.ə.nə.bl̩/ |
| Letters | 10 |
| Frequency rank | #34,763 |
| Misspellings tracked | 15 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for abominable is 10 letters long, classified as anadj, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /əˈbɑm.ə.nə.bl̩/. Corpus data places it at rank #34,763 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 15 documented wrong-spelling variants for abominable, with forms such as "abbominable", "abmoinable", and "aboimnable". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English abhomynable, from Old French abominable, from Late Latin abōminābilis (“deserving abhorrence”), from abōminor (“abhor, deprecate as an ill omen”), from ab (“from, away from”) + ōminor (“forebode, predict, presage”), from ōmen (“sign, tok… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is abominable, spelled A-B-O-M-I-N-A-B-L-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Worthy of, or causing, abhorrence, as a thing of evil omen; odious in the utmost degree; very hateful; detestable; loathsome; execrable.
- 2Excessive, large (used as an intensifier).
- 3Very bad or inferior.
- 4Disagreeable or unpleasant.
Etymology
From Middle English abhomynable, from Old French abominable, from Late Latin abōminābilis (“deserving abhorrence”), from abōminor (“abhor, deprecate as an ill omen”), from ab (“from, away from”) + ōminor (“forebode, predict, presage”), from ōmen (“sign, token, omen”). Formerly erroneously folk-etymologized as deriving from Latin ab- + homo, literally "away from humankind," and therefore spelled abhominable, abhominal (Hence, Shakespeare puns on this when Hamlet speaks of incompetent actors that "imitate humanity abominably.")
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: abbominable,abmoinable,aboimnable,abomianble,abominabble,abominabel,abominablle,abominalbe,abominbale,abominible,abominnable,abomminable,abomniable,aobminable,baominable
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for abominable
Misspelling Variants of "abominable"
Frequency rank: #34,763 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter A in our English index: