animal
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
6 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "animal", 6-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 "animal" 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 "animal" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
animal is aEnglishnoun. It means: Any member of the kingdom Animalia of multicellular organisms that are usually mobile, whose cells are not encased in a rigid cell wall (distinguishing them from plants and fungi) and which derive ... Pronounced /ˈæn.ᵻ.məl/. It ranks #1,623 in English word frequency. Often confused with Anita and axial.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | animal |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈæn.ᵻ.məl/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #1,623 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 12 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for animal is 6 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈæn.ᵻ.məl/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,623 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 9 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 8 documented wrong-spelling variants for animal, with forms such as "ainmal", "aniaml", and "animall". 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 12 confusable-pair relationships, "Anita", "axial", "annual", 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 *h₂enh₁- Proto-Indo-European *-mos Proto-Indo-European *h₂enh₁mos Proto-Italic *anamos Latin animus Latin anima Proto-Italic *-ālis Latin -ālis Latin animālis Latin animalder. Old French animalbor. Middle English animal En… 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 animal, spelled A-N-I-M-A-L, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Any member of the kingdom Animalia of multicellular organisms that are usually mobile, whose cells are not encased in a rigid cell wall (distinguishing them from plants and fungi) and which derive energy solely from the consumption of other organisms (further distinguishing them from plants).
- 2Any member of the kingdom Animalia other than a human.
- 3A higher animal; an animal related to humans.
- 4A higher animal; an animal related to humans.
- 5A higher animal; an animal related to humans.
- 6A higher animal; an animal related to humans.
- 7A person who behaves wildly; a bestial, brutal, brutish, cruel, or inhuman person.
- 8A person of a particular type specified by an adjective.
- 9Matter, thing.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂enh₁- Proto-Indo-European *-mos Proto-Indo-European *h₂enh₁mos Proto-Italic *anamos Latin animus Latin anima Proto-Italic *-ālis Latin -ālis Latin animālis Latin animalder. Old French animalbor. Middle English animal English animal From Middle English animal, from Old French animal, from Latin animal, a nominal use of the adjective form animāle, neuter of animālis, from anima (“breath, spirit”). Displaced native Middle English deor, der (“animal”) (whence modern English deer; from Old English dēor (“animal”)), Middle English reother (“animal, neat”) (whence modern English rother; from Old English hrīþer, hrȳþer (“neat, ox”)).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ainmal,aniaml,animall,animla,animmal,anmial,annimal,naimal
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for animal
Misspelling Variants of "animal"
Frequency rank: #1,623 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter A in our English index: