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acrasia

Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.

Letters

7 characters

Language

English

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Detailed reference entry for the English word "acrasia", 7-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 "acrasia" 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 "acrasia" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.

acrasia is aEnglishnoun. It means: Lack of self-control; excess, intemperance; also, irregular or unruly behaviour. Pronounced /əˈkɹeɪ.zɪ.ə/.

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Key facts for acrasia
PropertyValue
Headwordacrasia
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
IPA/əˈkɹeɪ.zɪ.ə/
Letters7
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

acrasia is not present in the top-100,000 ranked English corpus, typical for technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary.

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The English entry for acrasia is 7 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /əˈkɹeɪ.zɪ.ə/. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Lack of self-control; excess, intemperance; also, irregular or unruly behaviour.".

No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for acrasia in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.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: Learned borrowing from Late Latin acrasia (“lack of temperance”), and from its etymon Ancient Greek ᾰ̓κρᾱσῐ́ᾱ (ăkrāsĭ́ā, “bad mixture”), from ἄκρᾱτος (ákrātos, “pure, unmixed; of a person: intemperate, violent”) + -ῐ́ᾱ (-ĭ́ā, suffix forming feminine abstrac… 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 acrasia, spelled A-C-R-A-S-I-A, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Lack of self-control; excess, intemperance; also, irregular or unruly behaviour.

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Late Latin acrasia (“lack of temperance”), and from its etymon Ancient Greek ᾰ̓κρᾱσῐ́ᾱ (ăkrāsĭ́ā, “bad mixture”), from ἄκρᾱτος (ákrātos, “pure, unmixed; of a person: intemperate, violent”) + -ῐ́ᾱ (-ĭ́ā, suffix forming feminine abstract nouns). Ἄκρᾱτος (Ákrātos) is derived from ᾰ̓- (ă-, prefix forming terms having a sense opposite to the stems or words to which it is attached) + κεράννυμι (keránnumi, “to blend, mix; to cool or temper by mixing”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱerh₂- (“head, top; horn”)) + -τος (-tos, suffix forming adjectives). Doublet of acrasy.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "acrasia"?
"acrasia" is spelled A-C-R-A-S-I-A. The IPA pronunciation is /əˈkɹeɪ.zɪ.ə/.
What does "acrasia" mean?
As a noun, "acrasia" means: Lack of self-control; excess, intemperance; also, irregular or unruly behaviour.
How do you pronounce "acrasia"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "acrasia" is /əˈkɹeɪ.zɪ.ə/. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What is the origin of the word "acrasia"?
Learned borrowing from Late Latin acrasia (“lack of temperance”), and from its etymon Ancient Greek ᾰ̓κρᾱσῐ́ᾱ (ăkrāsĭ́ā, “bad mixture”), from ἄκρᾱτος (ákrātos, “pure, unmixed; of a person: intemperate, violent”) + -ῐ́ᾱ (-ĭ́ā, suffix forming femini... See the full etymology section above for more details.
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Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Frequency data from Wordfreq. Misspellings derived from Hunspell dictionaries.