accident
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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8 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "accident", 8-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 "accident" 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 "accident" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
accident is aEnglishnoun. It means: An unexpected event with negative consequences occurring without the intention of the one suffering the consequences, and (in the strict sense) not directly caused by humans. Pronounced /ˈæk.sɪ.dənt/. It ranks #1,979 in English word frequency. Often confused with ancient and accidental.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | accident |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈæk.sɪ.dənt/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #1,979 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 4 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for accident is 8 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈæk.sɪ.dənt/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,979 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 14 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 10 documented wrong-spelling variants for accident, with forms such as "accdient", "acciddent", and "accidennt". 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 also participates in 4 confusable-pair relationships, "ancient", "accidental", "accidently", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂éd Proto-Italic *ad Proto-Italic *ad- Latin ad- Proto-Indo-European *ḱh₂d-der. Proto-Italic *kadō Latin cadō Latin accidō Latin accidēns Old French accidentbor. Middle English accident English accident First attested in… 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 accident, spelled A-C-C-I-D-E-N-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1An unexpected event with negative consequences occurring without the intention of the one suffering the consequences, and (in the strict sense) not directly caused by humans.
- 2An unexpected event with negative consequences occurring without the intention of the one suffering the consequences, and (in the strict sense) not directly caused by humans.
- 3A collision or crash of a vehicle, aircraft, or other form of transportation that causes damage to the transportation involved; and sometimes injury or death to the transportation's occupants or bystanders in close proximity. (but see Usage notes)
- 4Any chance event.
- 5Chance; random chance.
- 6Any property, fact, or relation that is the result of chance or is nonessential or nonsubstantive.
- 7Any property, fact, or relation that is the result of chance or is nonessential or nonsubstantive.
- 8An instance of incontinence.
- 9An instance of incontinence.
- 10An unintended pregnancy.
- 11An unintended pregnancy.
- 12An irregular surface feature with no apparent cause.
- 13A sudden discontinuity of ground such as fault of great thickness, bed or lentil of unstable ground.
- 14A point or mark which may be retained or omitted in a coat of arms.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂éd Proto-Italic *ad Proto-Italic *ad- Latin ad- Proto-Indo-European *ḱh₂d-der. Proto-Italic *kadō Latin cadō Latin accidō Latin accidēns Old French accidentbor. Middle English accident English accident First attested in the late 14th century. From Middle English accident, from Old French accident, from Latin accidēns, present active participle of accidō (“happen”); from ad (“to”) + cadō (“fall”). See cadence, case. In the sense “unintended pregnancy”, first attested in 1932.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: accdient,acciddent,accidennt,accidentt,accidetn,accidnet,acciednt,acicdent,acident,cacident
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for accident
Misspelling Variants of "accident"
Frequency rank: #1,979 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter A in our English index: