army
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "army", 4-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 "army" 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 "army" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
army is aEnglishnoun. It means: A large, highly organized military force, concerned mainly with ground (rather than air or naval) operations. Pronounced /ˈɑː.mi/. It ranks #921 in English word frequency. Often confused with ay and art.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | army |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈɑː.mi/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #921 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for army is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈɑː.mi/. Corpus data places it at rank #921 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 8 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for army, with forms such as "amry", "armmy", and "armyy". 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, "ay", "art", "ATM", 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 *h₂er-der. Proto-Indo-European *h₂(e)rmosder. Latin arma Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂yéti Proto-Italic *-āō Latin -ō Latin armō ▲ Proto-Indo-Europe… 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 army, spelled A-R-M-Y, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A large, highly organized military force, concerned mainly with ground (rather than air or naval) operations.
- 2A large, highly organized military force, concerned mainly with ground (rather than air or naval) operations.
- 3A large, highly organized military force, concerned mainly with ground (rather than air or naval) operations.
- 4The governmental agency in charge of a state's army.
- 5A large group of people working toward the same purpose.
- 6A large group of social animals working toward the same purpose.
- 7Any multitude.
- 8The military as a whole.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂er-der. Proto-Indo-European *h₂(e)rmosder. Latin arma Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂yéti Proto-Italic *-āō Latin -ō Latin armō ▲ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-tós Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂tos Proto-Italic *-ātos Latin -ātus Latin armātus Anglo-Norman armeebor. Middle English armee English army From (1386) Middle English armee, borrowed from Old French armee (cf. modern French armée), from Medieval Latin armāta (“armed force”), a noun taken from the past participle of Latin armāre (“to arm”), itself related to arma (“tools, arms”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂er- (“to join, fit together”). Doublet of armada. Displaced native Old English here and fierd.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: amry,armmy,armyy,arrmy,arym,ramy
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for army
Misspelling Variants of "army"
Frequency rank: #921 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter A in our English index: