apple
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "apple", 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 "apple" 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 "apple" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
apple is aEnglishnoun. It means: A common, firm, round fruit produced by a tree of the genus Malus. Pronounced /ˈæp.əl/. It ranks #1,781 in English word frequency. Often confused with axle and appt.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | apple |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈæp.əl/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #1,781 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 19 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for apple is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈæp.əl/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,781 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 19 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 5 documented wrong-spelling variants for apple, with forms such as "aple", "aplpe", and "appel". 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 19 confusable-pair relationships, "axle", "appt", "apply", 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 *h₂ébōl Proto-Germanic *aplaz Proto-West Germanic *applu Old English æppel Middle English appel English apple The noun is derived from Middle English appel (“Malus domestica fruit or tree, apple; any type of fruit, nut, or… 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 apple, spelled A-P-P-L-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A common, firm, round fruit produced by a tree of the genus Malus.
- 2A common, firm, round fruit produced by a tree of the genus Malus.
- 3A common, firm, round fruit produced by a tree of the genus Malus.
- 4A common, firm, round fruit produced by a tree of the genus Malus.
- 5A common, firm, round fruit produced by a tree of the genus Malus.
- 6A common, firm, round fruit produced by a tree of the genus Malus.
- 7A common, firm, round fruit produced by a tree of the genus Malus.
- 8A common, firm, round fruit produced by a tree of the genus Malus.
- 9A common, firm, round fruit produced by a tree of the genus Malus.
- 10A common, firm, round fruit produced by a tree of the genus Malus.
- 11A common, firm, round fruit produced by a tree of the genus Malus.
- 12A common, firm, round fruit produced by a tree of the genus Malus.
- 13A common, firm, round fruit produced by a tree of the genus Malus.
- 14A tree of the genus Malus; especially Malus domestica which is cultivated for its edible fruit; the apple tree.
- 15Synonym of applewood (“the wood of the apple tree”).
- 16A person.
- 17Synonym of CBer (“a CB radio enthusiast”).
- 18An assist.
- 19A Native American or redskinned person who acts or thinks like a white (Caucasian) person.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂ébōl Proto-Germanic *aplaz Proto-West Germanic *applu Old English æppel Middle English appel English apple The noun is derived from Middle English appel (“Malus domestica fruit or tree, apple; any type of fruit, nut, or tuber; tree bearing fruit; (figurative) ball, sphere; (Christianity) forbidden fruit in Eden”), from Old English æppel (“apple; any type of fruit; (figurative) ball, sphere; eyeball”), from Proto-West Germanic *applu (“apple; any type of fruit”), from Proto-Germanic *aplaz (“apple; any type of fruit”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ébōl, *h₂ébl̥ (“apple”). As regards noun sense 1.4 (“forbidden fruit”), the type of fruit eaten by Adam and Eve is not identified in the Book of Genesis in the Bible. It may have come to be identified with the apple because of the similarity between Latin mālum (“apple”) and malum (“evil; misery, torment; wrongdoing”). The verb is derived from the noun. Cognates Cognate with Scots aipple (“apple”), North Frisian aapel, Oapel, ååpel (“apple”), Saterland Frisian Apel, Appel (“apple”), West Frisian apel, appel (“apple”), Alemannic German effél, epfel, epfil, öpfil (“apple”), Bavarian eipfele, epfl, Åpfe (“apple”), Cimbrian oupfal, öpfel, öpfl (“apple”), Dutch appel (“apple”), German Apfel (“apple”), German Low German Appel (“apple”), Limburgish Ape̩l, appel (“apple”), Luxembourgish Apel (“apple”), Mòcheno epfl (“apple”), Vilamovian epuł (“apple”), Yiddish עפּל (epl, “apple”), Danish æble (“apple”), Faroese epl, epli (“apple; potato”), Icelandic epli (“apple”), Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk eple (“apple”), Swedish äpple (“apple”), Crimean Gothic apel (“apple”), Irish úll (“apple”), Lithuanian óbuolỹs (“apple”), Russian я́блоко (jábloko, “apple”), Welsh afal (“apple”), possibly Ancient Greek ἄμπελος (ámpelos, “vine”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: aple,aplpe,appel,applle,paple
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for apple
Misspelling Variants of "apple"
Frequency rank: #1,781 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter A in our English index: