alcohol
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
7 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "alcohol", 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 "alcohol" 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 "alcohol" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
alcohol is aEnglishnoun. It means: Any of a class of organic compounds (such as ethanol) containing a hydroxyl functional group (-OH). Pronounced /ˈæl.kə.hɒl/. It ranks #2,424 in English word frequency. Often confused with alcoholic.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | alcohol |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈæl.kə.hɒl/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #2,424 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 1 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for alcohol is 7 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈæl.kə.hɒl/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,424 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 4 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 alcohol, with forms such as "aclohol", "alccohol", and "alchool". 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 1 confusable-pair relationship, "alcoholic", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Akkadian 𒎎𒋆𒁉𒍣𒁕 (guḫlum)bor. Aramaic כוחלא (kuḥlā)bor. Arabic كُحْل (kuḥl) Andalusian Arabic اَلْكُحُول (al-kuḥūl)bor. Medieval Latin alcoholder. Middle English alcofol English alcohol First attested in the 15th century from Middle Englis… 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 alcohol, spelled A-L-C-O-H-O-L, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Any of a class of organic compounds (such as ethanol) containing a hydroxyl functional group (-OH).
- 2Ethanol.
- 3Beverages containing ethanol, collectively.
- 4Any very fine powder.
Etymology
Etymology tree Akkadian 𒎎𒋆𒁉𒍣𒁕 (guḫlum)bor. Aramaic כוחלא (kuḥlā)bor. Arabic كُحْل (kuḥl) Andalusian Arabic اَلْكُحُول (al-kuḥūl)bor. Medieval Latin alcoholder. Middle English alcofol English alcohol First attested in the 15th century from Middle English alcofol, from Middle French alcohol or Spanish alcohol, derived from the Medieval Latin rendering alcohol transmitted in medical or alchemical literature of Arabic اَلْكُحْل (al-kuḥl, “kohl”), which in Andalusian Arabic also bore the form كُحُول (kuḥūl), قُحُول (quḥūl); bearing thus the meaning of stibnite first, then generalized in meaning to a powder obtained by triturating a material, then also to liquids obtained by boiling down, and specialized to mean spirit of wine, ethanol, in the 18th century, then the narrow chemical sense after 1850. Doublet of alcool and kohl. Various old etymological notes. * Bartholomew Traheron in his 1543 translation of John of Vigo introduces the word as a term used by "barbarous" (Moorish) authors for "fine powder": the barbarous auctours use alcohol, or (as I fynde it sometymes wryten) alcofoll, for moost fine poudre. * William Johnson in his 1657 Lexicon Chymicum glosses the word as antimonium sive stibium. By extension, the word came to refer to any fluid obtained by distillation, including "alcohol of wine", the distilled essence of wine. * Libavius in Alchymia (1594) has vini alcohol vel vinum alcalisatum. * Johnson (1657) glosses alcohol vini as quando omnis superfluitas vini a vino separatur, ita ut accensum ardeat donec totum consumatur, nihilque fæcum aut phlegmatis in fundo remaneat. * Some authorities, including Rachel Hajar, suggest that the ultimate etymon was the Arabic term اَلْغَوْل (al-ḡawl, “bad effect, evil result of headache”) (as used in Qur’an verse 37:47, but this word is rather poetical and could for topical reasons not have been picked up from Arabic by Medieval writers, and aside from that the relation to stibium is well documented.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: aclohol,alccohol,alchool,alcohhol,alcohlo,alcoholl,alcoohl,allcohol,alochol,lacohol
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for alcohol
Misspelling Variants of "alcohol"
Frequency rank: #2,424 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter A in our English index: