alike
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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5 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "alike", 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 "alike" 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 "alike" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
alike is anEnglishadj. It means: Having resemblance or similitude; similar; without difference. Pronounced /əˈlaɪk/. It ranks #5,756 in English word frequency. Often confused with aloe and Arie.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | alike |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adj |
| IPA | /əˈlaɪk/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #5,756 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for alike is 5 letters long, classified as anadj, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /əˈlaɪk/. Corpus data places it at rank #5,756 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Having resemblance or similitude; similar; without difference.".
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for alike, with forms such as "ailke", "aliek", and "alikke". 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, "aloe", "Arie", "alone", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: The adjective comes from a conflation of several different terms: * Middle English alich, alych, alyke, a Late Middle English development from earlier Middle English anlich, anlyke, from Old English onlīċ, anlīċ. Compare German ähnlich. * The borrowed Old N… 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 alike, spelled A-L-I-K-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Having resemblance or similitude; similar; without difference.
Etymology
The adjective comes from a conflation of several different terms: * Middle English alich, alych, alyke, a Late Middle English development from earlier Middle English anlich, anlyke, from Old English onlīċ, anlīċ. Compare German ähnlich. * The borrowed Old Norse cognate of the same word, álíkr, ultimately yielding similar Late Middle English forms. * Middle English ylich, ylych, ilich, ylik, ylike, ȝelic, from Old English ġelīċ (“like; alike; similar; equal”), from Proto-West Germanic *galīk, from Proto-Germanic *galīkaz (“alike, similar”). Cognate with Scots elyke, alyke (“like, alike”), Saterland Frisian gliek (“like, alike”), West Frisian lyk, gelyk (“like, alike”), Dutch gelijk (“like, alike”), German Low German liek, gliek (“like, alike”), German gleich (“equal, like”), Danish lig (“alike”), Swedish lik (“like, similar”), Norwegian lik (“like, alike”), Icelandic líkur (“alike, like, similar”). Equivalent to a- (Etymology 3) + like. Compare also West Frisian allyk (“all the same, alike”). Similarly, the adverb also comes from a conflation of several different terms: * Middle English aliche, alyche, alyke, a Late Middle English development from earlier Middle English anliche, anlyke, from Old English onlīċe, anlīċe. * Additionally Middle English oliche, olike, ultimately from the Old Norse cognate of the same word, álíka. * Middle English yliche, ylyche, iliche, ylike, ȝelice, from Old English ġelīċe (“alike, similarly”).
Antonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ailke,aliek,alikke,alkie,allike,laike
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for alike
Misspelling Variants of "alike"
Frequency rank: #5,756 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter A in our English index: