anneal
/əˈniːl/
"anneal" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“anneal” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 6
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To subject to great heat and then (often slow) cooling, and sometimes reheating and further cooling, for the purpose of rendering less brittle; to temper; to toughen.
Corpus desk
Index EN-anneal · anneal · English
anneal · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 6 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "A" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | anneal |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /əˈniːl/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “anneal” in English
Rare enough to double-check
anneal is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed /əˈniːl/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 5 senses are on record.
anneal has no tracked misspelling variants, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English anelen, onelen, from Old English onǣlan (“to burn, ignite, set fire to, consume, heat, enlighten, incite, inflame, inspire, kindle”), from Proto-Germanic *ana (“on”) + Proto-Germanic *ailijaną (“to burn”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eyd… The correct English form is anneal, spelled A-N-N-E-A-L.
Definition
- 1To subject to great heat and then (often slow) cooling, and sometimes reheating and further cooling, for the purpose of rendering less brittle; to temper; to toughen.
- 2To cool glass slowly, to minimize internal stress.
- 3To burn colors onto a glass or other surface.
- 4To make a double-stranded nucleic acid by pairing a single strand with a complementary strand.
- 5To strengthen or harden.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how anneal appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The best tough soft iron, such as will weld round, is drawn into rods by smiths, using charcoal fires, and taking welding heats every time, the rod is about 1.4 inch diameter, 9 or 10 feet long, containing 4lbs. each, tapered at each end to a long point; they are first anealed by being brought to a bright red heat, in a furnace excluding the air as much a…
On closer inspection it appeared that steel annealed at 100° is, cæteris paribus, more easily soluble than glass hard steel; steel annealed at 200° more easily soluble than steel annealed at 100°, and steel annealed at 360° more easily soluble than steel annealed at 200°. […] These curious results were substantiated by annealing one-half of short glass ha…
Etymology
From Middle English anelen, onelen, from Old English onǣlan (“to burn, ignite, set fire to, consume, heat, enlighten, incite, inflame, inspire, kindle”), from Proto-Germanic *ana (“on”) + Proto-Germanic *ailijaną (“to burn”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eydʰ- (“to burn”). The double-N spelling may have arisen by analogy with Latinate verbs like announce, annex, and annul. The word is related to Old English onāl (“that which is burnt, burning; incense”), Old English āl (“fire, burning”), Icelandic eldur (“fire”), Swedish eld (“fire, flame”), Danish ild (“fire”).
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.