arraign
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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7 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "arraign", 7-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Wiktionary, and usage frequency ranked against an open word-frequency list covering the top 100,000 English words. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "arraign" 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 "arraign" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
arraign is aEnglishverb. It means: To officially charge someone in a court of law. Pronounced /əˈɹeɪn/.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | arraign |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /əˈɹeɪn/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for arraign is 7 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /əˈɹeɪn/. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No misspelling variants are generated for arraign in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English areynen (“to interrogate, arraign, reprimand”), from Anglo-Norman areiner, arener, from Old French araisnier, areisnier, aresnier (“to speak to, address; accuse (in a law court)”) (whence modern French arraisonner (“to verify cargo, to a… 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 arraign, spelled A-R-R-A-I-G-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To officially charge someone in a court of law.
- 2To call to account, or accuse, before the bar of reason, taste, or any other tribunal.
Etymology
From Middle English areynen (“to interrogate, arraign, reprimand”), from Anglo-Norman areiner, arener, from Old French araisnier, areisnier, aresnier (“to speak to, address; accuse (in a law court)”) (whence modern French arraisonner (“to verify cargo, to arraign”)), from Vulgar Latin *arratiōnāre, from Latin adratiōnāre, from ad (“to”) + *ratiōnāre (“to reason, talk reasonably, talk”), from ratiō (“reason, reasoning, discourse”), from rat-, past-participle stem of rērī (“to reckon, calculate”). First attested in the late 14th century. Doublet of areason. About the -g- within the word, Etymonline and the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary both agree that it is present by hypercorrection and appears since the 16th century. The Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) and the Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (1986) however, provides two etymological links each, which are Old French aragnier and araigner. The Oxford English Dictionary (1885, 1989) did not support either of these hypotheses, but did attribute Old French arraigner, arainer to an unrelated obsolete sense and etymon.
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