age
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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3 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "age", 3-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 "age" 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 "age" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
age is aEnglishnoun. It means: The amount of time that some being has been alive, or that some thing has been in existence, as measured from its birth or origin until the present or until some other given reference point. (Often... Pronounced /eɪd͡ʒ/. It ranks #475 in English word frequency. Often confused with as and at.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | age |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /eɪd͡ʒ/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #475 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for age is 3 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /eɪd͡ʒ/. Corpus data places it at rank #475 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 15 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for age in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "as", "at", "an", 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 *h₂ey- Proto-Indo-European *h₂óyu Proto-Italic *aiwom Proto-Indo-European *-teh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-ts Proto-Indo-European *-teh₂ts Proto-Italic *-tāts Proto-Italic *aiwotāts Vulgar Latin aetās Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ … 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 age, spelled A-G-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The amount of time that some being has been alive, or that some thing has been in existence, as measured from its birth or origin until the present or until some other given reference point. (Often measured in number of years; alternatively in months, days, hours, etc.; see also the usage notes)
- 2The state of being old; the latter part of life.
- 3Any particular stage of life.
- 4The time of life at which some particular power or capacity is understood to become vested.
- 5Maturity; especially, the time of life at which one attains full personal rights and capacities.
- 6A particular period of time in history, as distinguished from others.
- 7A particular period of time in history, as distinguished from others.
- 8A particular period of time in history, as distinguished from others.
- 9A particular period of time in history, as distinguished from others.
- 10One of the twelve divisions of a Great Year, equal to roughly 2000 years and governed by one of the zodiacal signs; a Platonic month.
- 11A period of one hundred years; a century.
- 12A generation.
- 13A long time.
- 14Lifespan, lifetime; the total time that some being is alive from birth to death (or some category of beings, on average).
- 15The entitlement of the player to the left of the dealer to pass the first round in betting, and then to come in last or stay out; also, the player holding this position; the eldest hand.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂ey- Proto-Indo-European *h₂óyu Proto-Italic *aiwom Proto-Indo-European *-teh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-ts Proto-Indo-European *-teh₂ts Proto-Italic *-tāts Proto-Italic *aiwotāts Vulgar Latin aetās Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-tós Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂tos Proto-Italic *-ātos Vulgar Latin -ātus Proto-Indo-European *-kos Proto-Italic *-kos Vulgar Latin -cus Vulgar Latin -icus Vulgar Latin -āticus Vulgar Latin -āticum Vulgar Latin *aetāticum Old French eagebor. Middle English age English age From Middle English age, Old French aage, eage, edage, from an assumed Vulgar Latin *aetāticum, derived from Latin aetātem, itself derived from aevum (“lifetime”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eyu- (“vital force”). Compare French âge. Displaced native Old English ieldu. The verb is from Middle English agen, from the noun. Originally found mostly as a participial adjective, probably an adjective in -ed, derived from the noun, reanalyzed to create a verb; perhaps modeled on such pairs as Latin senēscō (seneō; verb) / senex (adjective) and Middle French vieillir (verb) / vieil (adjective). Also compare Old French se aagier, eogier (“become of age”).
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #475 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter A in our English index: