argument
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
8 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "argument", 8-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 "argument" 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 "argument" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
argument is aEnglishnoun. It means: A fact or statement used to support a proposition; a reason. Pronounced /ˈɑːɡjʊmənt/. It ranks #2,282 in English word frequency. Often confused with augment and armament.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | argument |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈɑːɡjʊmənt/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #2,282 |
| Misspellings tracked | 12 |
| Confusable pairs | 4 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for argument is 8 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈɑːɡjʊmənt/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,282 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 15 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 12 documented wrong-spelling variants for argument, with forms such as "agrument", "arggument", and "argmuent". 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 4 confusable-pair relationships, "augment", "armament", "arguments", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Latin arguō Proto-Indo-European *-mn̥ Proto-Indo-European *-mn̥tom Proto-Italic *-məntom Latin -mentum Latin argūmentumder. Anglo-Norman arguementbor. Middle English argument English argument From Middle English argument, from Anglo-Norman an… 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 argument, spelled A-R-G-U-M-E-N-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A fact or statement used to support a proposition; a reason.
- 2A fact or statement used to support a proposition; a reason.
- 3A process of reasoning; argumentation.
- 4An abstract or summary of the content of a literary work such as a book, a poem or a major section such as a chapter, included in the work before the content itself; (figuratively) the contents themselves.
- 5A verbal dispute; a quarrel.
- 6Any dispute, altercation, or collision.
- 7Any of the phrases that bear a syntactic connection to the verb of a clause.
- 8The independent variable of a function.
- 9The phase of a complex number.
- 10A quantity on which the calculation of another quantity depends.
- 11A value, or a reference to a value, passed to a function.
- 12A parameter at a function call; an actual parameter, as opposed to a formal parameter.
- 13A matter in question; a business in hand.
- 14The subject matter of an artistic representation, discourse, or writing; a theme or topic.
- 15Evidence, proof; (countable) an item of such evidence or proof.
Etymology
Etymology tree Latin arguō Proto-Indo-European *-mn̥ Proto-Indo-European *-mn̥tom Proto-Italic *-məntom Latin -mentum Latin argūmentumder. Anglo-Norman arguementbor. Middle English argument English argument From Middle English argument, from Anglo-Norman and Old French arguement, from Latin argumentum. The English word is analysable as argue + -ment. Doublet of argumentum. Displaced native Old English racu and ġeflit.
Antonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: agrument,arggument,argmuent,arguemnt,argumennt,argumentt,argumetn,argumment,argumnet,arrgument,arugment,ragument
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for argument
Misspelling Variants of "argument"
Frequency rank: #2,282 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter A in our English index: