agent
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "agent", 5-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 "agent" 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 "agent" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
agent is aEnglishnoun. It means: One who exerts power, or has the power to act. Pronounced /ˈeɪ.d͡ʒənt/. It ranks #1,622 in English word frequency. Often confused with ant and ages.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | agent |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈeɪ.d͡ʒənt/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #1,622 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for agent is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈeɪ.d͡ʒənt/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,622 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 10 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for agent, with forms such as "aegnt", "agennt", and "agentt". 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 20 confusable-pair relationships, "ant", "ages", "aunt", 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 *h₂eǵ- Proto-Indo-European *h₂éǵeti Proto-Italic *agō Latin agō Latin agēnsder. English agent From Latin agēns, present active participle of agere (“to drive, lead, conduct, manage, perform, do”). 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 agent, spelled A-G-E-N-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1One who exerts power, or has the power to act.
- 2One who acts for, or in the place of, another (the principal), by that person's authority; someone entrusted to act on behalf of or in behalf of another, such as to transact business for them.
- 3A person who looks for work for another person and brokers a deal between the hiree and hirer.
- 4Someone who works for an intelligence agency: whether an officer or employee thereof or anyone else who agrees to help their efforts (for ideology, for money, as blackmailee, or otherwise).
- 5An active power or cause or substance; something (e.g. biological, chemical, thermal, etc.) that has the power to produce an effect.
- 6In the client-server model, the part of the system that performs information preparation and exchange on behalf of a client or server. Especially in the phrase “intelligent agent” it implies some kind of autonomous process which can communicate with other agents to perform some collective task on behalf of one or more humans.
- 7The participant of a situation that carries out the action in this situation, e.g. "the boy" in the sentences "The boy kicked the ball" and "The ball was kicked by the boy".
- 8A cheat who is assisted by dishonest casino staff.
- 9A law enforcement officer tasked with enforcing a specific field of law.
- 10A respectful term of address for an agent, especially a law enforcement agent.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂eǵ- Proto-Indo-European *h₂éǵeti Proto-Italic *agō Latin agō Latin agēnsder. English agent From Latin agēns, present active participle of agere (“to drive, lead, conduct, manage, perform, do”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: aegnt,agennt,agentt,agetn,aggent,agnet,gaent
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for agent
Misspelling Variants of "agent"
Frequency rank: #1,622 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter A in our English index: