among
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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5 characters
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English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "among", 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 "among" 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 "among" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
among is aEnglishprep. It means: Of a person or thing: in the midst of and surrounded by (other people or things). Pronounced /əˈmʌŋ/. It ranks #486 in English word frequency. Often confused with Ang and Amos.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | among |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Prep |
| IPA | /əˈmʌŋ/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #486 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for among is 5 letters long, classified as aprep, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /əˈmʌŋ/. Corpus data places it at rank #486 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 9 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 among, with forms such as "ammong", "amnog", and "amogn". 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, "Ang", "Amos", "Avon", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Old English on Proto-Indo-European *ḱe Proto-Indo-European *ḱóm Proto-Germanic *ga- Proto-West Germanic *ga- Old English ġe- Old English mang Old English ġemang Old English onġemang Old English amang Middle English among English among The pre… 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 among, spelled A-M-O-N-G, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Of a person or thing: in the midst of and surrounded by (other people or things).
- 2Of a person or thing: in the midst of and surrounded by (other people or things).
- 3Of a person or thing: in the midst of and surrounded by (other people or things).
- 4Of a person or thing: in the midst of and surrounded by (other people or things).
- 5Of an event or a fact.
- 6Of an event or a fact.
- 7Of an event or a fact.
- 8Of an event or a fact.
- 9Of an event or a fact.
Etymology
Etymology tree Old English on Proto-Indo-European *ḱe Proto-Indo-European *ḱóm Proto-Germanic *ga- Proto-West Germanic *ga- Old English ġe- Old English mang Old English ġemang Old English onġemang Old English amang Middle English among English among The preposition is derived from Middle English among, amang, amange, amonge (“in the presence of, amid, among; in, within; between; during”), from Old English amang, onġemang (preposition), from on (“on, among, in”) (probably ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂en- (“on, onto”)) + ġemang (“crowd; mixture”, noun) (from ġe- (prefix forming nouns denoting association or similarity) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱóm (“beside, by; near; with”)) + mang- (from mængan, mengan (“to mingle, mix”); ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *menk- (“to knead; to press”))). By surface analysis, a- (prefix meaning ‘at; in; on’) + mong (“crowd, throng; group”). The adverb is derived from Middle English among, amang (“accompanied by, along with, by the side of, in association with, together; all the while, continually; also, besides; at the same time; from time to time, occasionally; meanwhile; within”), from Old English onġemang (adverb): see further above. cognates * Dutch mank, maank (“among”) * German mang (“among”) (dialectal) * German Low German mank, manken (“among”) * Saterland Frisian monk, monken (“among”) * West Frisian mank (“among”)
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ammong,amnog,amogn,amongg,amonng,aomng,maong
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for among
Misspelling Variants of "among"
Frequency rank: #486 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter A in our English index: